Exploiting V2G to optimize residential energy consumption with electrical vehicle (dis)charging

The potential breakthrough of pluggable (hybrid) electrical vehicles (PHEVs) will impose various challenges to the power grid, and esp. implies a significant increase of its load. Adequately dealing with such PHEVs is one of the challenges and opportunities for smart grids. In particular, intelligent control strategies for the charging process can significantly alleviate peak load increases that are to be expected from e.g. residential vehicle charging at home. In addition, the car batteries connected to the grid can also be exploited to deliver grid services, and in particular give stored energy back to the grid to help coping with peak demands stemming from e.g. household appliances. In this paper, we will address such so-called vehicle-to-grid (V2G) scenarios while considering the optimization of PHEV charging in a residential scenario. In particular, we will assess the optimal car battery (dis)charging scheduling to achieve peak shaving and reduction of the variability (over time) of the load of households connected to a local distribution grid. We compare (i) a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario, without any intelligent charging, (ii) intelligent local charging optimization without V2G, and (iii) charging optimization with V2G. To evaluate these scenarios, we make use of our simulation tool, based on OMNeT++, which combines ICT and power network models and incorporates a Matlab model that allows e.g. assessing voltage violations. In a case study on a three-feeder distribution network spanning 63 households, we observe that non-V2G optimized charging can reduce the peak demand compared to BAU with 64%. If we apply V2G to the intelligent charging, we can further cut the non-V2G peak demand with 17% (i.e., achieve a peak load which is only 30% of BAU).