Co-Simulation of PEV coordination schemes over a FiWi Smart Grid communications infrastructure

Plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) have great potential of being the alternative for the next-generation of transportation. Uncoordinated PEV charging, however, may put a significant pressure on the distribution grid. In this paper, on a modified IEEE-13 Node distribution network of 342 residential customers, we propose a converged fiber-wireless infrastructure based on EPON, WiMAX, wireless mesh network and sensor technologies to support coordinated charging of PEVs. To measure the performance of both the communications and power system perspectives of proactive scheduling algorithms and proposed reactive control protocols, our recently developed hybrid co-simulator based on OMNeT++ and OpenDSS is used. Co-simulation results show that the proposed low-cost communications infrastructure enables to efficiently schedule PEV chargings and quickly stabilize the voltage in a stress scenario.