Impact of Plug-In Electric Vehicle Battery Charging on a Distribution System Based on Real-Time Digital Simulator

Abstract

Although the electric vehicles (EVs) have many economic and environmental advantages as compared to the conventional cars, the increased adoption of these vehicles will bring up new concerns for the power distribution grid in terms of introducing new peaks into the system or causing voltage quality problems. This study investigates the impact of the electric vehicles battery charging on the distribution system in terms of voltage unbalance at various locations, transformers overloading, and shifting the peak of the system. In this research, a 12.47 kV real distribution network has been modelled using real time digital simulator, using real data from a power distributor. The study presents four different scenarios of uncoordinated EVs integration for two different charging times (evening and night) and two different charging rates (level I and level II) at different penetration levels ranging from 10% to 100%. Voltage unbalance at different locations is determined and transformer overloading is analysed. The influence of EVs charging on the daily load curve is shown.