Electric Vehicles Contributions to Voltage Improvement and Loss Reduction in Microgrids

This paper investigates the impact of Plug-in Electric Vehicles (PEVs) on the voltage improvement and loss reduction in MicroGrids (MG). The proposed model in this paper aims to minimize the total expected voltage deviation of the MG, while being subject to economic policies. The studied MG consists of PEVs, Renewable Energy Sources (RES), Energy Storage Systems (ESSs), and Distributed Generations (DGs), and the MG is able to participate in day-ahead energy markets. The uncertainties in arrival and departure time of PEVs, RES outputs, and day-ahead market prices are stochastically taken into account and the PEVs are modelled to be capable of charging or discharging active power and/or absorbing or injecting reactive power. A four-quadrant operation mode of a PEV is developed in this paper and incorporated in a mix-integer non-linear programming (MINLP) optimization formulation. The advantages of exploiting PEVs in an MG for enhancing voltage profile and loss reductions are then scrutinized. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model, various case studies are conducted on a modified 18-bust IEEE test system.