Design of a PV Powered Charging Station for PHEVs

Recently the plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) have increasingly been used for transportation due to less petrol consumption and low carbon emission. The well-known disadvantages of this vehicle are charging time and mile range compared to gas-powered vehicles. Moreover, charging a vast number of vehicles directly from the grid may cause damage to the local grid due to due to high current draws. Thus off-grid sources may be employed to share amount of power for charging PHEVs. This paper focuses on the design of a grid connected 30 kW photovoltaic powered PHEV charging station with optional battery storage units it is indispensable to design such system with low cost operation with respect to grid utility price. This is achieved by optimizing charging time of PHEVs through demand side management strategies such as load shifting, valley filling etc. using the real-coded genetic algorithms.