Electric vehicles (EVs) and renewable energy sources offer the potential to substantially decrease carbon emissions from both the transportation and power generation sectors of the economy. Mass adoption of EVs will have a number of impacts and benefits, including the ability to assist in the integration of renewable energy into existing electric grids. This paper reviews the current literature on EVs, the electric grid, and renewable energy integration. Key methods and assumptions of the literature are discussed. The economic, environmental and grid impacts of EVs are reviewed. Numerous studies assessing the ability of EVs to integrate renewable energy sources are assessed; the literature indicates that EVs can significantly reduce the amount of excess renewable energy produced in an electric system. Studies on wind–EV interaction are much more detailed than those on solar photovoltaics (PV) and EVs. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research.

Electric vehicles and the electric grid: A review of modeling approaches, Impacts, and renewable energy integration

Energy sustainability and environmental preservation have become worldwide concerns with the many manifestations of climate change and the continually increasing demand for energy. As cities and nations become more technologically advanced, electricity consumption rises to levels that may no longer be manageable if left unattended. The Smart Grid offers an answer to the shift to more sustainable technologies such as distributed generation and microgrids. A general public awareness and adequate attention from potential researchers and policy makers is crucial. This paper presents an overview of the Smart Grid with its general features, functionalities and characteristics. It presents the Smart Grid fundamental and related technologies and have identified the research activities, challenges and issues. It demonstrates how these technologies have shaped the modern electricity grid and continued to evolve and strengthen its role in the better alignment of energy demand and supply. Smart Grid implementation and practices in various locations are also unveiled. Concrete energy policies facilitate Smart Grid initiatives across the nations. Interestingly, Smart Grid practices in different regions barely indicate competition but rather an unbordered community of similar aspirations and shared lessons.

A review of the development of Smart Grid technologies

In this work, we present methods to estimate average daily origin–destination trips from triangulated mobile phone records of millions of anonymized users. These records are first converted into clustered locations at which users engage in activities for an observed duration. These locations are inferred to be home, work, or other depending on observation frequency, day of week, and time of day, and represent a user’s origins and destinations. Since the arrival time and duration at these locations reflect the observed (based on phone usage) rather than true arrival time and duration of a user, we probabilistically infer departure time using survey data on trips in major US cities. Trips are then constructed for each user between two consecutive observations in a day. These trips are multiplied by expansion factors based on the population of a user’s home Census Tract and divided by the number of days on which we observed the user, distilling average daily trips. Aggregating individuals’ daily trips by Census Tract pair, hour of the day, and trip purpose results in trip matrices that form the basis for much of the analysis and modeling that inform transportation planning and investments. The applicability of the proposed methodology is supported by validation against the temporal and spatial distributions of trips reported in local and national surveys.

Origin-destination trips by purpose and time of day inferred from mobile phone data

A survey on smart grid technologies and applications

As concerns of oil depletion and security of supply remain as severe as ever, and faced with the consequences of climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions, Europe is increasingly looking at alternatives to traditional road transport technologies. Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) are seen as a promising technology, which could lead to the decarbonisation of the Light Duty Vehicle fleet and to independence from oil. However it still has to overcome some significant barriers to gain social acceptance and obtain appreciable market penetration. This review evaluates the technological readiness of the different elements of BEV technology and highlights those technological areas where important progress is expected. Techno-economic issues linked with the development of BEVs are investigated. Current BEVs in the market need to be more competitive than other low carbon vehicles, a requirement which stimulates the necessity for new business models. Finally, the all-important role of politics in this development is, also, discussed. As the benefit of BEVs can help countries meet their environmental targets, governments have included them in their roadmaps and have developed incentives to help them penetrate the market.

A review of Battery Electric Vehicle technology and readiness levels

Plug-in electric vehicles (PEV) are emerging as an efficient and sustainable alternative for private and public road transportation. From the point of view of electric grids, PEVs are currently considered as simple loads due to their low market penetration. However, as the PEV fleet grows, implementation of an intelligent management system will be necessary in order to avoid large capital expenditures in network reinforcements and negative effects on electric distribution networks, such as: voltage deviations, transformers and lines saturations, increase of electrical losses, etc. These issues may jeopardize the safety and reliability of the grid. As a consequence, this topic has been researched in many papers where a wide range of solutions have been proposed. This paper presents a review of different strategies, algorithms and methods to implement a smart charging control system. Also significant projects around the world about PEVs integration are presented. Finally, on the basis of this review, main findings and some recommendations are presented.

Plug-in electric vehicles in electric distribution networks: A review of smart charging approaches

Fuel cell-based CHP system modelling using Artificial Neural Networks aimed at developing techno-economic efficiency maximization control systems

Plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) sales have grown in the last years. Depending on the PEV model, each PEV can store approximately between 5-40 kWh of energy. This energy can be used not only for travel purposes but also for other appliances like providing energy for homes (V2H) or buildings (V2B) and even for supply ancillary services to distribution network operators, through vehicle to grid concept (V2G). This paper presents the different strategies that can be found in the literature about delivering energy from PEV batteries. Also, commercial solutions and pilot projects are presented.

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Delivering Energy from PEV batteries: V2G, V2B and V2H approaches

The impact that plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) can have on low voltage distribution grids is widely influenced by charging and driving patterns of PEV users. Those impacts may be reduced using passive or active charging strategies. In this contest, a wide range of solutions can be found in the literature seeking not only to improve distribution grid reliability and performance but also get economic profits. However, the effectiveness of those charging strategies is affected by driving and charging behaviour. Thus, it is important to develop a model of drivers' behaviour in order to determine whether a specific charging strategy is a suitable solution. This paper presents a new algorithm to model driving and charging behaviour, which uses stochastic data based on real data collected in 2009 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS). However, the presented algorithm can be easily adapted to data obtained from other surveys.

Modelling social patterns of plug-in electric vehicles drivers for dynamic simulations

In recent years, photovoltaic (PV) generation technology has significantly reduced its cost to profitable levels. As a consequence, the number of PV-based self-consumption installations is increasing. This trend is expected to continue in years to come. In this context, this paper presents a methodology to analyze the impact of medium-large penetration levels of PV self-consumption on voltage levels and power losses of MV distribution networks, considering two different approaches regarding reactive power. As PV self-consumption is more likely to be concentrated in rural areas than urban areas, the present work takes into account six geographic distributions. The methodology has been applied to a MV distribution network of Murcia (Spain). Results show that a trade-off between electric power losses and voltage levels must be considered.

J. García-Villalobos

Papers

Plug-in electric vehicles in electric distribution networks: A review of smart charging approaches

Fuel cell-based CHP system modelling using Artificial Neural Networks aimed at developing techno-economic efficiency maximization control systems

Delivering Energy from PEV batteries: V2G, V2B and V2H approaches

Modelling social patterns of plug-in electric vehicles drivers for dynamic simulations

Impact of photovoltaic self-consumption on power losses and voltage levels of MV distribution networks