Smart charging management system of plugged-in EVs based on user driving patterns in micro-grids

Micro-grid system stability and security is becoming recently a challenging issue due to the high penetration of renewable energies in power production like wind and solar regarding their unpredictable nature. Furthermore, the presence of Electric Vehicles (EVs) in the near future in households is inevitable as the EVs worldwide popularity is growing. In this paper, a smart control method is proposed for the plugged-in EVs charging procedure applying smart grid capabilities. Essential grid operation constraints including overload occurrence prevention, market energy prices tracking are taken into account. The proposed control method is evaluated in a modified micro-grid in the MATLAB/SIMULINK environment. Real data of users driving behaviors utilized from performed studies is applied into the model to obtain realistic results. Different worst case scenarios are derived in a day time horizon to show the effectiveness of this smart charging method. The results demonstrate the positive impact of this methodology in saving operational costs and increasing system stability.