Inductive power transfer for electric vehicles: Potential benefits for the distribution grid

It is believed that the latest advances in battery and converter technology, along with government mandates on energy independence and resilience, will pave the way for higher deployment of electric vehicles in the transportation fleet. These vehicles, when equipped with bidirectional energy transfer capabilities, can function as mobile energy resources and be utilized in a vehicle-to-grid (V2G) scheme to temporarily inject energy back into the power grid. The forecasted increase in the number of these vehicles can turn them into a considerable energy resource to be used by the utilities as ancillary services or even for long-term integration with the grid. The energy injection into the power system by electric vehicles has been investigated in the literature for charging stations or single residential charging devices. The need for the vehicle to be stationary during the transfer, and the possible drive and/or change in the driving route in order to go the station are some of the hurdles that may lead to inconvenience and hence lower V2G participation by the vehicle drivers. Moreover, the need for an electrical connection between the vehicle and the station makes implementing remote supervisory control schemes difficult, if not impractical. However, with the advent of inductive charging systems for contactless transfer of energy, new horizons have been opened for seamless integration of these resources of energy into the distribution grid. This paper focuses on the applications of inductive power transfer systems for V2G purposes in the modern distribution grid. It will be shown here that such a scheme could potentially allow for supervisory control and management of the mobile energy resources with the ultimate goal of improving the reliability and security of the power grid without the need for capacity expansion.