Social Acceptance of Microgrids Dedicated to Electric Vehicle Charging Stations

The electromobility requires installing recharging infrastructures for electric vehicles (EVs) in urban areas. However, social acceptance is an important issue to increase public awareness on EVs recharging infrastructures and have to be studied simultaneously with the technical project. This paper aims at presenting the social acceptance study of an innovative energy system based on renewable energy, i.e. EVs charging station powered by a microgrid. The proposed energy system consists of three components: an intelligent infrastructure for recharging EVs (IIREVs) powered by microgrid, a heterogeneous fleet of EVs, and a building with a connection to IIREVs. The microgrid optimizes the power flows in accordance with the requirements of the EVs users and the public power grid. This microgrid contains photovoltaic sources and takes into account the following strategies: vehicle to grid, vehicle to building, and IIREVs to building (energy generated by the IIREVs and not used by the EVs directly feeds the building). The social acceptance survey show that a large majority accepts the IIREVs while some imperatives have to be considered in certain urban cases implantations. According to respondents' expectations, an action plan is highlighted in order to best fitting IIREVs in urban areas.