Impact Analysis of Electric Vehicles on Distribution Grid by Hardware-In-The-Loop Simulations

Climate policies are pushing toward the reduction of fossil fuel exploitation. The transport industry, widely based on internal-combustion engines, is undergoing a profound transformation phase, leading to the large-scale integration of electric vehicles into the grids. The extensive proliferation of these new distributed and intermittent loads may affect the reliable and secure operation of the power system. To face this challenge, it is necessary to develop multi-domain modeling techniques, which should be able to accurately describe the fast electromagnetic transients ruling the power flows e xchanged with the g rid, as far as the actual operation of both the grid and the vehicle communication systems. In this context, real-time hardware-in-the loop-based simulations have been recognized as one of the most promising enabling technology for modeling the electric vehicle dynamics, allowing the interaction of computation units with physical devices. Hence, this paper aims at analyzing the recent trends in the real-time simulation platforms applied to the electric vehicle integration into the power systems.