Investigation on reactive power support capability of PEVs in distribution network operation

According to the environmental and economic advantages of the Electric Vehicles (EVs), it is predicted that the penetration of EVs will be increased in the near future. EVs are fast growing loads in the power systems. Several types of EVs are invented and commercialized, such as Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) and Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs). A PHEV needs a battery charging plug. The high penetration of the PHEVs in the Grid has great impact on the network planning stages, as well as the network operation schemes. Increasing the number of PHEVs, without an appropriate management, could decrease the power quality in distribution networks. In this paper we present a reactive power management strategy, considering a high penetration of PHEVs, to tackle with the negative impact of PHEVs, namely reducing the power losses, improving the voltage profile and removing line congestion in distribution network. To do so, at the first step, we obtain a generic model for a PHEV to simulate the PHEV´s connection into a distribution network. Then we present a reactive power management scheme to demonstrate how PHEVs could be used to control reactive power and how it could minimize the power losses and improve the voltage profile, as well as removing congestion in the distribution networks. 33-bus distribution network is considered to perform the case study. The results are highly implicate the performance of the proposed method.