Hierarchical Coordination of a Vehicle-to-Grid System to Improve Self-consumption in Building MicroGrids

Aiming to take full advantage of Electric Vehicles' (EVs) batteries despite unpredictability in their arrival and departure time, in this paper, a two-level hierarchical model predictive controller coupled with an innovative charging-discharging scheduler for EVs in building microgrids is proposed. Besides providing a complete framework for its design, this paper also analyses different scenarios of EVs' batteries exploitation that would be beneficial for both building microgrids and EVs' owners. The simulation results conducted in MATLAB Simulink demonstrated that the proposed hierarchical controller could assure that most EVs are completely charged before their departure time while enabling building microgrids to increase their annual photovoltaic self-consumption rate by about 3 percent point compared to the uncontrolled strategy.