Techno-Environmental Assessment of Photovoltaic-Powered Charging Stations for Light Electric Vehicles

Following the increasing use of battery Electric Vehicles (EVs) for urban mobility, the related need for EV recharges is introducing additional challenges, including the possible stressing of power grids. In the case of Light Electric Vehicles (LEVs), given the modest power demand of LEV recharges, the adoption of charging station powered by distributed renewable sources becomes reasonable. The actual sustainability of such systems, however, is not apparent and merits in depth investigation. To answer this question, the present work presents a simulation framework for a comprehensive techno-environmental assessment of a LEV charging station powered by PhotoVoltaic (PV) system with Li-Ion battery storage. The operation of such system is simulated for 20 years in island-mode and in hybrid island-and grid-mode, assuming the availability of the public grid as auxiliary power source. The related GreenHouse Gas (GHG) emission are computed as kg of CO<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</inf> eq. per kWh by varying the storage capacity and considering 5 different daily power demand profiles. Additional performance indicators, such as the quality of service, the battery stress, the PV derating losses, and the hourly grid power demand are computed to assess key technical parameters related to the operation and the energetic self-sufficiency of the system. The main conclusion is that the island and hybrid operation modes provide a sensible GHG emissions reduction but the grid connection is a necessary support in order to maintain a high quality of service also in the case of an evening-peaked charging demand distribution.