Centralised coordination of EVs charging and PV active power curtailment over multiple aggregators in low voltage networks

Abstract Widespread application of residential photovoltaic (PV) systems and electric vehicles (EVs) has led the distribution system operators (DSOs) to face new technical challenges such as overloading and significant voltage variations, especially on low voltage (LV) grids. This adverse effect may be mitigated by employing the aggregators as intermediary actors to coordinate the operation at the distribution level. Therefore, this paper proposes a centralised coordination strategy to mitigate both PV and EV impacts, such as voltage rising/dropping at noon or evening, respectively, by defining the optimal export limit of PV power and EVs charging among multiple aggregators at the DSO level. The latter is in charge to dictate the optimal aggregated signals to every aggregator by employing a mixed-integer quadratic programming (MIQP) approach. The aggregated PV power is evenly managed for each aggregator by weighting. Two convex optimisation models are defined to satisfy both power and voltage constraints of the LV network. Each proposed optimisation approach can be utilised when there is or no detailed information about the LV network topology. The concepts discussed in this paper are tested on a real low voltage network considering a critical penetration level of EVs and PVs.