Automated distributed electric vehicle controller for residential demand side management

Electric vehicles (EVs) are gaining more interest recently due to the various challenges and opportunities they can provide to the utility operator. For electric utilities that have demand side management (DSM) program, EVs can represent a burden or a help depending on the control strategy and the DSM program. In this paper, an automated fuzzy-based controller is proposed to successfully integrate and coordinate the EVs charging in a decentralized and fair way. The controller takes into consideration the owner requirements, the voltage at the point of connection and the pricing signal coming from the utility. The controller is tested under different DSM programs that exist in the literature and a new DSM program that is compatible with the current infrastructure is proposed to accommodate EVs as prosumers. The controller performance is validated through Matlab simulations. The results showed that the controller can successfully coordinate the charging of EVs in a fair manner, avoid under-voltages and shave the system peaks without any rebound effect.