Power management optimization of electric vehicles for grid frequency regulation: Comparative study

Abstract

Electric vehicles (EVs) have shown promise in providing ancillary services, e.g., frequency regulation. This is mainly due to their capacities and fast response. On the contrary, the rapid integration of EVs in the grid poses challenges, such as frequency and voltage stability. In order to mitigate the above-mentioned issues, several dispatching strategies have been introduced in the recent literature to optimize the charging/discharging rates of EVs. In this paper, a comparative study of power management strategies for secondary frequency regulation (SFR) employing a fleet of EVs is presented. A hierarchical control scheme is employed to compare two cases, namely control at the charging station (CS) level and novel control at the EVs level. Under both cases, a multi-objective optimization approach is utilized to define the optimal charging and discharging rates of EVs using a pattern search algorithm. Furthermore, the performance of the two models is experimented under contingency cases, a notable contribution of this study. Finally, simulations are carried out using OPAL-RT real time simulator to validate the performance of the two models based on real-time traces obtained from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland (PJM) interconnection and California independent system operator (CAISO). To further validate the proposed model, a comparison with a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) based model is presented.