Collaborative Electric Vehicle Charging Strategy with Regenerative Braking Energy of Railway Systems in Park & Ride Areas

In the last years, focusing on electric vehicles (EVs) is enhanced by nations due to the environmental reasons and the deficiency of fossil fuels. Meanwhile, supporting the required power of widespread EV charging infrastructures (EVCIs) would surcharge the power grid and cause some problems. Utilizing the inherent energy-saving method in electric railway systems (ERSs) known as regenerative braking energy (RBE) in strategic points, like parking areas close to railway stations or park-and-ride areas can help the grid to avoid overload situations and increase energy efficiency. In this paper, a new collaborative charging method is proposed to charge EVs batteries by RBE of trains and taking advantage of batteries energy to auxiliary supply the trains during acceleration mode towards peak shaving purposes. In this context, a park-and-ride area in Milan San Donato metro substation is considered as a real case study. The simulation results are provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method with 24 hours train traffic considering the EV population number with different global charging/discharging rates and grid connection limits.