Operational Challenges and Enabling Technologies for Grid Integration of Electric Vehicles

The operational aspects of future power systems are expected to be influenced significantly by the increasing grid integration of electric vehicles (EVs). This study analyzes the impact of EVs on future power systems and investigates the enabling technologies to facilitate higher EV integration into the electricity grid. On this note, a thorough literature review on the existing grid challenges has been performed and associated enabling technologies have been identified. Based on the EV charging profiles, EV loading patterns were extracted and analyzed. The resulting EV loading profiles have then been overlaid on commercial/residential loading profiles to demonstrate the impact of widespread EV charging stations on the electricity network. This study has then investigated the voltage violation issues on a power network and the reduction of voltage violation by employing load shifting, network reconfiguration, renewable integration and battery storage. The implementation of the selected EV enabling technologies demonstrates significant improvement in the system voltage profile where the effectiveness of the enabling technologies would depend on the types of system loading patterns.