Colloquia

Summary

The transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy is important for reaching the goals set in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Because of this energy transition, there is an increase in renewable energy sources (RES), such as PV power. Also, in the transportation sector, the popularity of EVs is increasing as a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels. Implementing these RES and charging these EVs can overload the electricity grid. Smart charging algorithms can help prevent this overloading by aligning the charging of the EVs with the production by PV systems.

This study investigates three different strategies for online EV charging. These charging strategies are compared based on how they lower the variance of the load profile. Furthermore, we compared the energy not served to a user if the user leaves earlier than indicated. We test these strategies in a simulated environment. We select one strategy from these simulations to implement in a case study.

The simulated case study consists of 4 EV chargers and a 27 kWp PV system. In this case study, we compared a selected online algorithm to the current implementation used in a pilot site. This case study showed that this selected algorithm is effective in lowering the variance of the load profile of the EV chargers.