Integration of Electric Vehicles in the Unit Commitment Problem with Uncertain Renewable Electricity Generation

Abstract

The integration of electric vehicles (EVs) in the power system is a challenging issue for the power system and network operators. The paper uses several Unit Commitments (UC) models which incorporate high levels of wind power production, applying different methods to tackle the renewables' uncertainty. The selected power system is IEEE RTS 96. The UC models are further extended to integrate the EVs. Our focus is to assess the EVs impact on the total operating cost and the power grid adequacy to handle the extra load, by examining different charging profiles and penetration levels of EVs with the different UC models. Simulation results show that an optimized charging strategy is considerably more efficient than the random charging strategy, both in the total operating cost and the ability to integrate more EVs. The comparison between the UC models show that the most robust UC model leads to higher total operating cost, due to its more conservative methodology to tackle the stochastic nature of wind. There exists a non-linear trade-off between power system robustness and the total operating cost, depending on each power system characteristics, affecting also the penetration level of EVs.Keywords: Electric Vehicles, Unit Commitment, Renewables, Uncertainty, Power System, IEEE RTS 96JEL Classifications: Q47, L94DOI: https://doi.org/10.32479/ijeep.7125