Assessing the effect of system reconfiguration to enhance the capacity of electric-vehicle charging stations in radial distribution systems

The number of circulating electric-vehicles (EVs) will increase significantly in the coming years. This makes it essential to improve the hosting capacity margins for EV charging stations (EVCSs) in distribution systems. This paper assesses the potential of reconfiguration to enhance the capacity of EVCSs to avoid large investments in system upgrades. The non-coincident nature of regular and EVCSs demands are considered. The problem is formulated as a mixed-integer and nonlinear optimization problem that aims to maximize the capacity of EVCSs. The problem constraints are the limits of the bus voltages and branch currents, as well as topology constraints. The results indicate that system reconfiguration for multi-period scenarios can improve the capacity of EVCSs significantly.