Modeling and simultaneous management of electric vehicle penetration and demand response to improve distribution network performance

Abstract Background: The usage of electric vehicles is daily increasing. It is predicted that the penetration of electric vehicles in the electrical network will grow steadily during the next few years. This growth of penetration causes major challenges for power system users, especially the distribution network. Firstly, increasing load consumption, especially during peak hours, and secondly, increasing the cost of developing a network to provide load, along with the operation moved away from the optimum point, are the major challenges of the penetration of electric vehicles. The aim of this study is to propose a solution not only to resolve these challenges but also to make an opportunity to improve the network parameters. Methods: The charging and discharging strategy along with two price-based and voltage-based load management programs are proposed to manage the penetration of electric vehicles for economic and technical purposes. The proposed plan is implemented by GAMS and MATLAB software on the distribution network. Results: The test network used in this study is the 37 buses low voltage network. The voltage of this network is 400V and its power reference is 100kVA. The upstream nominal capacity is 800 kVA. The allowed voltage range is also 0.9 pu to 1.05 pu. The network loads are indoor and equipped with electric vehicle parking. Conclusions: The results showed that by properly managing the penetration of electric vehicles along with responsive loads, not only were the network parameters not compromised and the penetration of all the vehicles was managed without the need for network development, but also by applying the proposed strategy, the network parameters were improved.