Coordinated Electric Vehicle Charging Strategy for Self-Sustained Office Parking Lots

The rapid increase in electric vehicle (EV) adoption poses significant challenges for the current distribution system, which may struggle to accommodate the high EV charging demand. Existing EV charging infrastructure requires substantial charging times, ranging from 30 minutes to several hours, exceeding the refueling time for traditional gasoline vehicles. Eventually, EVs will undergo overnight home charging in the low-voltage residential area. This concentrated, uncoordinated EV charging will superimpose on residential demand and may coincide with the system peak. This study introduces the planning of office parking lots (OPLs) integrated with distributed energy resources (DERs) to shift the EV charging demand over the daytime. A Coordinated EV charging (CEVC) strategy is proposed to efficiently utilize DERs to minimize the energy transaction with the grid by varying the EV charging power to closely follow the solar generation. Further, the proposed strategy is compared with uncoordinated EV charging in terms of peak demand, energy exchange with the grid, and operational cost.