Smart charge management of Electric Vehicle fleets from Renewable Energy through innovative deferring strategies

Nowadays, transport and electricity generation sectors are still heavily dependent on CO 2 -emitting technologies. Nevertheless, technological improvements, coupled with strong cost reductions, have enabled the rapid growth of the total installed energy capacity of Renewable Energy Sources for electricity generation (RES). Building, optimizing and operating innovative energy systems, where fossil fuels are becoming increasingly less important, pave the way towards a more climate-sustainable future. A key factor for the success of such integrated systems is the possibility of smart managing the energy fluxes in a confined electrical infrastructure such as a microgrid, in order to optimize the self-consumption of locally produced RES. This work presents an integrated Energy Management System (EMS) based on smart control algorithms for the design and sizing of the microgrid, coupled with an Internet of Things (IoT) platform which takes care for the real-time management of the heterogeneous devices making up the microgrid. At its core, the proposed EMS is based on strategies for handling a group of batteries of connected devices that are assumed to be deferrable loads. These management strategies are applied to a real microgrid reference case with a modelled mobility profile of an Electric Vehicle (EV) fleet simulating complex energy patterns, including comprehensive charging/discharging scenarios in Vehicle-To-Grid (V2G) and Vehicle-To-Vehicle (V2V) modes. Results show that, applying the objective functions of RES self-consumption maximization developed on the EMS platform, the energy exchange with the grid through the microgrid single connection point (PCC — Point of Common Coupling) could be significantly reduced up to 35%. • Coupling Renewable Electrical Sources (RES) with Electric Vehicles (EVs) charging in a microgrid. • Smart management of EV fleets by means of a software platform driven by an IoT middleware. • Real time optimization of energy fluxes leads to an improvement of RES self-consumption and self-sufficiency up to 23%. • Energy exchange with the grid through the Point of Common Coupling (PCC) can be significantly reduced up to 35%. • Levelized Cost Of Energy (LCOE) used for EV charging is reduced up to 15%.