Optimal management of battery charging of electric vehicles: A new microgrid feature

Large deployment of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) will put new challenges regarding the power systems operation. The MicroGrid (MG) concept can be exploited to support the progressive integration of PHEVs into the Low Voltage (LV) networks by developing smart charging strategies to manage the PHEVs batteries charging procedures in order to avoid reinforcements in the grid infrastructures. Assuming that a number of PHEVs owners allow managing the batteries charging when their cars are parked, this paper proposes an approach that aims to find suitable individual active power set-points corresponding to the hourly charging rate of each PHEV battery connected to the LV grid. The Evolutionary Particle Swarm Optimization (EPSO) tool is used to find these active power set points. This requires an additional software module to be housed in the MV/LV secondary substation level, called Optimal Power Set-points Calculator (OPSC).