PV-Powered Charging Station: Energy Management and Cost Optimization

The market of electric vehicles (EVs) is growing fast, and, therefore, EVs can help reducing direct greenhouse gas emissions. The energy system, denoted as an intelligent infrastructure for recharging EVs, includes photovoltaic sources, storage, and grid connection as power sources. The goal is to study the energy cost optimization problem taking into account the intermittent arrival of EVs. The optimization problem is formulated as a mixed integer linear programming to minimize the global energy cost, with respect to physical limitations of the energy system. In addition, the EV users' interaction is highlighted. Simulation results, done under MATLAB-Simulink environment, show that the EV user demands are satisfied, proving the feasibility of the proposed optimization problem.