Implementation of an Electric Vehicle test bed controlled by a Virtual Power Plant for contributing to regulating power reserves

With the increased focus on Electric Vehicles (EV) research and the potential benefits they bring for smart grid applications, there is a growing need for an evaluation platform connected to the electricity grid. This paper addresses the design of an EV test bed, which using real EV components and communication interfaces, is able to respond in real-time to smart grid control signals. The EV test bed is equipped with a Lithium-ion battery pack, a Battery Management System (BMS), a charger and a Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) unit for feeding power back to the grid. The designed solution serves as a multifunctional grid-interactive EV, which a Virtual Power Plant (VPP) or a generic EV coordinator could use for testing different control strategies, such as EV contribution to regulating power reserves. The EV coordination is realized using the IEC 61850 modeling standard in the communication. Regulating power requests from the Danish TSO are used as a proof-of-concept, to demonstrate the EV test bed power response. Test results have proven the capability to respond to frequent power control requests and they reveal the potential EV ability for contributing to regulating power reserves.