Utilization of Electric Vehicles for Vehicle-to-Grid Services: Progress and Perspectives

With every passing second, we witness the effect of the global environmental impact of fossil fuels and carbon emissions, to which nations across the globe respond by coming up with ambitious goals to become carbon-free and energy-efficient. At the same time, electric vehicles (EVs) are developed as a possible solution to reach this ambitious goal of making a cleaner environment and facilitating smarter transportation modes. This excellent idea of shifting towards an entirely EV-based mobility industry and economy results in a range of issues that need to be addressed. The issues range from ramping up the electricity generation for the projected increase in consumption to developing an infrastructure that is large enough to support the higher demand for electricity that arises due to the market penetration of EVs. Vehicle to grid (V2G) is a concept that is largely in a testing phase in the current scenario. However, it appears to offer a solution to the issues created by a mobility sector that the constantly growing EV fleet will dominate. Furthermore, the integration of EVs with the grid seems to offer various cost-wise and environment-wise benefits while assisting the grid by tapping into the idle energy of parked EVs during peak hours. This review aims to present some of the possible ancillary service potentials of such a system while also discussing the potential challenges, impacts, and future market penetration capabilities of V2G technology.

Electric Vehicles in Smart Grids

Electric vehicles were proposed as a good solution to solving energy crisis and environmental problems caused by the traditional internal combustion engine vehicles. In the last years due to the rapid development of the electric vehicles, the problem of power grid integration was addressed. In order to not put additional pressure onto the power grid several new technologies were developed. This chapter presents the smart grid technology, vehicle-to-grid concept, and electric vehicles grid integration. These technologies made possible the integration of electric vehicles without any major changes in the power grid. Moreover, electric vehicles integration brought new benefits to the power grid like better integration of renewable energy.

V2G Pilot Projects

Electric vehicles (EVs) are not only a viable energy efficient mode of transport, but they have considerable capacity of providing flexible and quick responding storage alternative based on vehicle-to-grid (V2G) scheme. V2G technology facilitates bidirectional flow of energy to and from the vehicle by a power converter. However, there is skepticism regarding the economic profitability of the V2G scheme. Despite the aforementioned challenges, the V2G technology is explored in matured markets. A number of V2G pilot projects across the world have investigated different aspects of V2G integration such as technological readiness, economic feasibility, social benefits, and challenges of V2G. This work aims to review the existing pilot projects on V2G functionality.

Battery Swapping Station

State-of-the-art research to solve the grid congestion due to EVs is focused on smart charging and using (centralized, de-centralized, vehicle-to-grid) stationery energy storage as a buffer between times of peak and off-peak demand. On the other hand, the charging of EVs introduces new challenges and opportunities. This can prove to be beneficial for the EV aggregator as well as to consumers, regarding the economy. Also, EV as distributed storage makes the grid more steady, secure, and resilient by regulating frequency and the spinning reserve as backup power. However, the charging time and range anxiety lead to peak challenges for the use of EVs. In this chapter battery swapping station (BSS) as solution to the EV charging station is discussed.

Multi-Level Inverters Interfacing Electric Vehicle Charging Stations With Microgrid for Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) Applications

Multi-level inverters (MLI) are power electronic converters that convert DC power to AC power with high power-quality of output voltage waveforms. These MLI are the main streamline converters for integrating dc power of EV with microgrids. Thus, the recent interest of researchers is to investigate the MLI with a lower number of active and passive switch counts which could integrate the DC power of EV to the microgrid with the boosting ability. This chapter discusses various topologies of MLI for the integration of the DC power of EV to the grid for vehicle-to-grid (V2G) applications. MLI converts DC power to AC power with high quality of output voltage waveform. Thus, the recent interest of researchers is to investigate the MLI with a lower number of active and passive switch counts which could integrate the DC power of EV to the microgrid. Also, MLI must be capable of boosting the voltage level to meet the grid requirements. The aim of this chapter is to discuss the various topologies of MLI for the integration of DC power of EV to the grid for vehicle-to-grid (V2G) applications.

Simulation of Bidirectional Converter for Vechile to Grid and Grid to Vechile Application

This paper represents a bidirectional converter for the application of vehicle to grid and grid to vehicle application. This converter can be used in the application of electric vehicle. And the results have been verified through simulation in MATLAB. The topology can provide an energy bi-directional flow path for energy exchange between the Libattery/supercapacitor (SC) hybrid energy storage system (HESS) of the electric vehicle and the grid. Keywords: bi-directional converter, vehicle, HESS, Li-battery.