Reactive power compensation using on board stored energy in Electric Vehicles

The features that can be performed by an electric vehicle depend essentially on the availability of energy and capacity of energy storage system of the electric vehicle,. Being the energy storage designed according to the requirements of the electric traction system, many additional features are somewhat limited. However, in certain situations, the energy stored on board can be used for conventional electrical networks, without affecting the performance of the electric vehicle. This article addresses the reactive power compensation as a feature inherent to the vehicle-to-grid connection. In this paper, the battery set on board of the electric vehicle supplies the traction system and a single phase inverter, which is connected to an ordinary AC grid. The inverter is controlled in order to supply current to the AC grid in order to compensate the AC grid power factor. The performed analysis is based on the PQ theory getting the current component that should be driven by the single phase inverter. This compensation, at this stage only compensates the fundamental component of the current and neglects the effects of the harmonics. This study aims to show that the electric vehicles can include the power factor compensation feature, without degrading their performance.