Optimal design of grid-interfaced EV chargers with integrated generation

The penetration of plug-in electric vehicles and renewable distributed generation is expected to increase over the next few decades. Large scale unregulated deployment of either technology can have detrimental impact on the electric grid. However, appropriate pairing of these technologies along with some storage could mitigate their individual negative impacts. This paper presents a framework and an optimization methodology for designing grid-interfaced systems that integrate electric vehicle chargers, distributed generation and storage. To demonstrate its usefulness, this methodology is applied to the design of optimal architectures for a residential charging case. It is shown that, given current costs, maximizing grid power usage minimizes system lifecycle cost. However, depending upon the location's solar irradiance patterns, architectures with solar photovoltaic generation can be more cost effective than architectures without.