Projects

Power Quality Enhancement and Vehicle-2-Grid Services using Intelligent Solar Powered Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure in Smart Grid

Excessive use of fossil fuels to meet the transportation demand all over the world has resulted in both its depletion and emissions that are out of control. With the growing popularity of electrified transportation across the world, there have been extensive reports of research involving Plug-in Electric Vehicles (PEVs), Electric Vehicle Charging Facilities (EVCF) and their integration to the main electric grid, besides sustainable energy resources for powering these vehicles. Powering PEVs with renewable energy results in cleaner and greener transportation. PEVs, when parked for charging, can undertake vehicle-to-grid (V2G) ancillary services to support the electrical grid stabilization. This requires intelligent control techniques and proper communication in a smartgrid environment. The potential of PEVs to participate in ancillary services and demand side management is explored in this research work. The research work starts with a comprehensive literature review on vehicle technologies, standards, grid integration methods, ancillary service potential of PEVs, V2G concept, charging strategies, power quality issues in grid and ways to mitigate them. This research proffers a power factor corrected public green-charging infrastructure accompanied by an integrated control, for electric Light Motor Vehicles (e-LMVs), compliant with recently formulated Indian charging standards. Power factor correction of PEV charging current, solar photo-voltaic grid integration and charging of energy storage system are achieved using control of bidirectional AC/DC converters. A firmware and user interface for multimode off-board DC charging, with Green, Fast and Semi-fast charging modes are investigated. An intelligent control for Fast charging is also presented, to reduce its pernicious impact on the grid. The simulation and hardware results verify the prime performance objectives of improving the local power quality and renewable energy utilization with multimode charging, in Indian context. The effectiveness of the proposed infrastructure is further demonstrated by a simulated use case, where 30 PEVs are randomly charged, in various modes, at this EVCF during busy commute hours. The research analyzes the potential of e-mobility to participate in intermittency flattening ancillary services (AS) to support solar photo-voltaic (PV) grid integration. Menorca, a Balearic touristic island belonging to Spain, is planning to reduce emissions and replace a major share of energy generation with renewable sources, especially solar PV. First, the capability of Plug-in Electric Vehicles (PEVs) to act as Energy Storage Systems (ESS) based on daily energy storage potential (ESP) with and without vehicle-to-grid (V2G) services in the Balearic island of Menorca is studied. Mobility behaviour and penetration levels of various categories of vehicles cars, vans, trucks, buses and motorcycles in the island are modelled using traffic data from Menorca island. Next, ancillary service (AS) potential of 1000 PEVs to support solar PV grid integration is analysed. A crucial parameter of PEVs to offer uni-V2G services under aggregator to participate in hour-ahead AS market, termed achievable power capacity (APC), is explored. Results show that, for bidirectional V2G services in summer, ESP can reach up to 100 MWh for minimum (P1) and 375 MWh for maximum (P6) penetration levels considered. The regulation potential for every 1000 private PEVs aggregated to a maximum of 4.6 MW and reserve potential to a maximum of 5.25 MW under coordinated charging. This reveals the great potential of PEVs in offering AS in small touristic islands. The research considers a V2G-enabled, Green, Level-3 DC and fast PEV charging facility (EVCF). The EVCF is capable of utilizing solar energy, providing V2G services through EV Aggregator Service Providers (ASP), and fast charging the PEVs using bidirectional converter control technique in conjunction with smart charging algorithm. The system, when simulated in MATLAB/SIMULINK environment, demonstrates the potential of PEVs in grid stabilization. Integration of solar photo-voltaic (PV) to the EVCF helped renewable energy integration as well. With high penetration of PEVs, the PEV charging can be coordinated to minimize charging impact on electrical distribution grid. This research has a collaboration with UPV Spain under the Erasmus Mundus scheme. A major part of the project was funded by the National Visveswaraya Scheme India.

Collaborations with Universities / Industry Partnerships

Dr. Carlos Alvaraz Bel

Professor

Institute of Energy Engineering UPV Spain