Mitigating Electric Vehicles Recharge Demand Impacts on the Electric Grid: e-Park Case Study

Studies have been showing that massive penetration of electric vehicles with non-controlled recharges can turn into a great threat to the distribution grid. In order to mitigate these impacts, this work presents the case study of the energy management strategy tested in a living laboratory, named e-Park. The contributions are strategies and tools to enable a faster, but harmonic, growing penetration of electric mobility allowing the use of its infrastructure as an ally to monitor and control of the distribution grid energy demand. The e-Park intents to integrate different technologies, such as photovoltaic generation, battery energy storage system, level 2 (mode 3) charging stations, and V2G, to test and validate the solutions. This work achieves this goal by deploying a software tool that manages vehicle recharges and optimize energy resources use, always respecting the electrical distribution grid energy demand limits.