Mitigating Adverse Impacts of Increased Electric Vehicle Charging on Distribution Transformers

Akansha Jain and Masoud Karimi-Ghartemani ()
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Akansha Jain: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS 39762, USA
Masoud Karimi-Ghartemani: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS 39762, USA

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 23, 1-26

Abstract: As the world is transitioning to electric vehicles (EVs), the existing power grids are facing several challenges. In particular, the additional charging power demand may repeatedly overload the traditionally-sized distribution transformers and adversely impact their operational life. To address this challenge, this paper proposes an EV-based reactive power compensation strategy for transformer overloading mitigation. Specifically, a low-bandwidth centralized recursive controller is proposed to determine a set point for the EV’s onboard charger’s reactive power. Importantly, the proposed strategy is practically implementable in existing distribution grids as it does not rely on smart grid infrastructure and is stable under potential communication delays and partial failures. This paper discusses the controller’s structure, design, and stability in detail. The proposed solution is tested with a realistic secondary distribution system considering four different EV charging scenarios with both Level 1 and Level 2 residential EV charging. Specifically, IEEE Standard C57.91-2011 is used to quantify the impact of EV charging on the transformer’s life. It is shown that with the proposed method, transformer overloading is significantly reduced, and the transformer’s life improves by an average of 47% over a year in all four scenarios.

Keywords: electric vehicles; distribution transformer; V2G; reactive power compensation; transformer aging (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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