Electric Vehicles and their Impacts on Integration into Power Grid: A Review

The exponential rise in electricity demand has become the primary reason of generating electricity from various new sources. Up until now, fossil fuels were the major source for generating power but it has changed drastically in recent years. Vehicles commonly used in today's world run solely on fossil fuels (i.e. gasoline, diesel, liquefied petroleum etc.) and their prodigious usage hints at the current over reliance on them. Fossil fuels are non-renewable and consequently, the existing transportability prototype is rendered untenable. Effects of energy shortage, meteoric decline in fossil fuel reserves along with environmental issues have diverted attention towards Electric vehicles. Electric vehicle is now the center of the attention and is termed as the future of transportability model. Use of Electric vehicle gives multiple advantages that include more use of renewable energy, less use of non-renewable energy sources, clean environment and energy storage options. Electric vehicles are capable of serving a dual purpose in terms of distributed storage units and loads both upon their integration with the power grid. Increased use of EVs, despite solving several problems has brought with it some new problems for power system and the grid. In this paper a brief review of Electric vehicles and their effects on power quality and power grid has been presented. In addition to this, a detailed review of impacts of EVs charging and discharging to grid is presented too.