Vehicle-to-grid technology for cost reduction and uncertainty management integrated with solar power

Abstract This paper optimizes the operation of electric vehicles in small charging stations deployed in electrical distribution networks. The grid is equipped with small-scale charging stations rather than one large-scale charging station. In addition, photovoltaic solar panels are installed on the grid to gain renewable energy benefits. The electric vehicles operate on vehicle-to-grid mode. The charging and discharging behavior of all the electric vehicles on all buses is optimized by the given method. The presented strategy optimizes the electric vehicles operation to damp out the renewable energy intermittency and energy cost reduction at the same time. And, it minimizes the charging-discharging cycles of the vehicles batteries in order to avoid battery degradation. The proposed problem is modeled as nonlinear stochastic programming including uncertainty of solar energy and solved by GAMS software. The results demonstrate that the suggested method can properly charge and discharge the vehicle-to-grid system. The vehicles are often charged on off-peak low-cost time periods and they are discharged at on-peak high-cost time-intervals. The Intermittency of solar cells is dealt with the achieved charging-discharging pattern for vehicle-to-grid system and cost of consumed energy is minimized by energy shifting. The results validate that the presented strategy can efficaciously achieve all the intended purposes at the same time.