Impact Evaluation of Plug-in Electric Vehicles (PEV) on Electric Distribution Networks

Evaluating the possible impact on electric distribution networks of a large number of plug-in electric vehicles (PEV) is becoming of great interest. In fact, during battery charging, PEVs are a widely spread load of significant magnitude and somewhat unpredictable. On the contrary PEV batteries may constitute a significant reserve and may be used to provide storage capability for cheap energy produced by renewable sources and to supply auxiliary services to the grid. The paper presents the preliminary results of an on-going project aimed at evaluating the impact of plug-in electric vehicles on distribution networks with specific regards to low voltage systems. Hypotheses such as battery size, number of users, load profiles without and with different PEV penetration are presented for successive scenarios set-up and simulations. Results are presented and commented.