Assessing the economic profit of a vehicle-to-grid strategy for current unbalance minimization

Plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) under the vehicle-to-grid (V2G) concept, providing ancillary services such as regulation, spinning reserves and peak shaving have been subject of many research works. However, power quality issues, such as current unbalance and voltage unbalance have had less reception among researchers in recent years. In order to draw attention on this matter, the purpose of this paper is to assess the economic profit of current-unbalance-minimization strategy as a new V2G application, from the point of view of PEV owners connected at a common-connection-point (CCP) in a low voltage (LV) network. To do so, the economic profit formulation is included in a PEV smart charging strategy for current unbalance minimization and the new strategy is tested on LV network environment, whose specifications are taken from French energy and distribution systems. Results show that uncoordinated charging causes a PEV user an average negative profit of -40 ce over a day, whereas using the CUF minimization strategy with V2G capabilities, the negative average profit, over a day, is reduced to -2 ce. Moreover, positive average profit per hour is registered through the afternoon and evening, leaving negative average profit per hour (necessary to charge the PEV´s battery) for late night and early morning hours when energy prices are the lowest.