Potential Power Quality Benefits of Electric Vehicles

Electric vehicles (EVs) are likely to have a continued presence in the light-vehicle market in the next few decades. As a result, EV charging will put an extra burden on the distribution grid and adjustments need to be made in some cases. On the other hand, EVs have the potential to support the grid as well. This paper presents a single-phase bidirectional charger topology which pairs up a photovoltaic (PV) source with an EV charger resulting in production cost reduction. The presented topology is then used for vehicle-to-grid (V2G) services. The main focus of this paper is on power quality services which only slightly discharge the battery. Among these services, it studies the possibility of local reactive injection of EVs connected to the grid through a single-phase charger to compensate for voltage drops caused by motor startup or inductive loads. It also studies the possibility of active power injection of EVs for short time periods during PV transients in cloudy weather to keep the system stable. It also studies the potential of EVs to help during low voltage ride-through of the PV sources. The studies are performed using Simulink simulations and a real-time implementation in Real Time Digital Simulator (RTDS). The results demonstrate the effectiveness of power quality V2G services with small wear on the EV battery.