Energy management in microgrids with plug-in electric vehicles, distributed energy resources and smart home appliances

Abstract

Smart Grid is transforming the way energy is being generated and distributed today, leading to the development of environment-friendly, economic and efficient technologies such as plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs), distributed energy resources and smart appliances at homes. Among these technologies, PEVs pose both a risk by increasing the peak load as well as an opportunity for the existing energy management systems by discharging electricity with the help of Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology. These complications, together with the PEV battery degradation, compound the challenge in the management of existing energy systems. In this context, microgrids are proposed as an aggregation unit to smartly manage the energy exchange of these different state-of-the-art technologies. In this chapter, we consider a microgrid with a high level of PEV penetration into the transportation system, widespread utilization of smart appliances at homes, distributed energy generation and community-level electricity storage units. We propose a mixed integer linear programming energy management optimization model to schedule the charging and discharging times of PEVs, electricity storage units, and running times of smart appliances. Our findings show that simultaneous charging and discharging of PEV batteries and electricity storage units do not occur in model solutions due to system energy losses.