Grid Integration of Electric Vehicles and Demand Response With Customer Choice

As electric vehicles (EVs) take a greater share in the personal automobile market, their penetration may bring higher peak demand at the distribution level. This may cause potential transformer overloads, feeder congestions, and undue circuit faults. This paper focuses on the impact of charging EVs on a residential distribution circuit. Different EV penetration levels, EV types, and charging profiles are considered. In order to minimize the impact of charging EVs on a distribution circuit, a demand response strategy is proposed in the context of a smart distribution network. In the proposed DR strategy, consumers will have their own choices to determine which load to control and when. Consumer comfort indices are introduced to measure the impact of demand response on consumers' lifestyle. The proposed indices can provide electric utilities a better estimation of the customer acceptance of a DR program, and the capability of a distribution circuit to accommodate EV penetration.