Distribution network reconfiguration to support electric vehicles integration

This paper presents the efficacy of network reconfiguration strategy along with coordinated charging of electric vehicles to support its integration on smart distribution network. The potential impacts of electric vehicles integration with different charging schemes namely: uncoordinated charging and coordinated charging with vehicle-to-grid capability are assessed. In order to mitigate the adverse effects of electric vehicles integration to distribution system, network reconfiguration problem is formulated and applied to find the on/off status of sectionalizing and tie switches in each hour of particular day. The optimization problem is solved using binary particle swarm optimization with varying inertia weight and acceleration constants. Various constraints associated with distribution network and electric vehicles loads are considered during optimization. Simulation results for typical IEEE 69 bus distribution network are provided as evidence of effectiveness of proposed strategies. Simulation results indicate that if coordinated charging with vehicle-to-grid capability is implemented using price based signal imposes less burden to the distribution network than uncoordinated charging and distribution network reconfiguration can contribute further to reduce power loss, reduce operational cost and improve voltage profile significantly.