McDavis Fasugba with adviser P. T. Krein

Figure 14: PEV performing a regulation service.

Figure 14: PEV performing a regulation service.

Plug-in electric vehicles (PEV)s offer both a reduction in the transportation carbon footprint and a regulation benefit to the power system utility grid. During a high-demand time interval when there is a need for load reduction, a grid operator can very quickly(faster than getting expensive generation units online) shut down the PEV’s charging process using its battery-grid-interfaced power electronics rectifier (converts ac power to dc). Figure 14 shows a possible setup. No power is pulled from the PEV’s battery. This research looks at the question, “Can the utility provide an incentive to the PEV owner for making their vehicle available and guarantee that their PEV will have the desired charge at the time required?”

An aggregator, an interface between the utility and the multiple vehicles to which it is connected, must be provided to maximize the benefit from multiple charging PEVs (a single PEV would have little effect on the entire grid). A formula is developed to denote the benefit of making a PEV available for regulation at hour h. The cost function could be formulated in terms of the total cost to charge the vehicle. The goal is to minimize this cost, as this will in turn maximize the benefits to the PEV owner. However, electricity prices are not fixed; thus a stochastic model for electricity prices will have to be developed or, alternatively, use Monte-Carlo simulations based on historical prices with respect to seasonality effects. The aggregator will have to run an optimization algorithm on the fly to determine which load is to be turned off in order to meet the set constraints. In summary, appropriate cost functions and constraints will be simulated to better understand the problem and a possible solution based on the results will be proposed.

This research is supported by the Grainger Center for Electric Machinery and Electromechanics.