Distribution System Service Restoration Using Electric Vehicles

Abstract

Nowadays the utilization of Electric Vehicles (EVs) has greatly increased. They are attaining greater attention due to their impacts on the grid at the distribution level. However, due to the increased need for electricity, EVs are also used to serve the load in the instance of electrical failure in the distribution systems. This paper presents a new approach to a service restoration method for a low-voltage distribution network at the time of a power outage using existing EVs available in a parking place. The objective function formulated here was a constrained linear optimization model. It aimed to develop priority-based scheduling of the residential user appliances while meeting all the operational constraints if the EV’s power was in a deficit at the hour of the outage. Weight factors were assigned to various residential appliances to decide their priority while scheduling. To substantiate the proposed methodology, a day load profile of a 20 kVA distribution transformer feeding eight residential users is considered. This was tested during an hour-long power outage scenario in the MATLAB and LINGO platforms, with four EVs available during the outage period. This method restored the maximum power to the residential appliances.

Keywords

• Electric Vehicles
• service restoration
• distribution system
• priority-based scheduling
• residential appliances