Evaluation of Electric Vehicles (EVs) Impact on Electric Grid

Rapid uptake of Electric Vehicles (EVs) necessitate a thorough investigation of their impact on the electric grid. Despite being an urgent issue, only small-scale studies have been done due to an uncertainty on their adoption rate and unavailability of realistic EVs load data. There is an urgent need to understand how and to what extent EVs will impact the grid and to what extent the EV hosting capacity can be maximised without any major orchestration. This research aims to answer these questions through a range of steady-state and quasi dynamic simulation studies performed on real urban and rural networks. EVs' grid impact and hosting capacity is estimated for real urban and rural distribution networks considering a wide range of scenarios - different levels of customers load, EVs regulated and unregulated charging, seasonable variations of load and solar PV output. The analysis performed in research provides visibility on the EVs impact on the existing distribution network, and the extent to which this impact can be managed through load management and EVs regulated charging without any major orchestration.