Electrical vehicles impact on unbalanced distribution networks considering different loads and energy prices

Abstract

The expansion of distributed generation and erratic loads create many challenges for electricity distribution networks (DN), like grid congestion and load unbalance. Technological advances in recent years have made the use of electric vehicles (EVs) more economical and justified for network connection. The use of smart EVs in the network scale, in addition to the peak shedding, if it is used in a single phase, it can also lead to the improvement of load unbalance. This paper proposes an energy and cost management model for the appropriate and distributed deployment of single phase EVs in distribution networks to provide network support for a DN including renewable resources. By connecting or disconnecting single-phase smart EVs to the DN, unbalanced loads in this network will be balanced as much as possible. To evaluate the proposed model, a network of 13 buses has been used, and the calculations of these energy costs have been measured during 24 h by two types of household and industrial loads. These loads are unbalanced in the DN and single-phase EVs have the ability to improve the unbalanced load of the DN. Also, the energy price is variable during the day and depends on the peak load. From the sensitivity analysis and with the relative increase or decrease of load, load change effects on the cost of each DN per-unit power have been measured and compared with the presence or absence of single-phase smart EVs to obtain more practical results. According to this paper, the use of EVs, in addition to improving the load of the DN, greatly reduces the costs of DN.

Keywords

• Electrical vehicle
• Distribution network
• Unbalanced load
• Energy management
• Distribution system planning