Technical challenges for electric power industries due to grid-integrated electric vehicles in low voltage distributions: A review

Grid-Integrated Vehicles (GIVs) are promising technologies for future Smart Grid (SG) and offer the potential to reduce the environmental impact of vehicles. The large scale deployment of GIVs without proper control of the time to charge the vehicles can result in unexpected challenges. This can lead to a disruptive impact on the current power distribution systems and in particular its substantial impacts in building power energy systems. Therefore, a proper model that predicts the realistic system behavior is required to analysis the true effects of introducing GIVs in the power grid. This paper presents a review of existing studies on GIV systems, their modeling techniques and their effects on power grids. Following a brief overview of the common types of electric vehicles (EVs) with their charging systems, a review of their impact on the low voltage distribution systems will be analyzed. The comprehensive review presented in this paper reveals that the impact of GIVs on power distribution systems can be quantified using the aspects of EVs, such as vehicle penetration, charging time, charging characteristics, driving patterns, transportation network. GIV studies are expected to be more popular in future years with the development of EV technologies and the government support to electricity utilities. Thereby, these factors will reduce the cost of energy to charge EV and enhance the practical implications of GIVs. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.