Lusha Wang – Preliminary Exam

About the event

Advisor: Dr. Noel Schulz

Degree:  Ph.D. Electrical & Computer Engineering

Title: Electric Vehicle Optimal Scheduling and Flexibility Quantification in Distribution Power Systems.

Abstract:

My research area is integrating electric vehicles (EVs) in distribution system operations. EVs are being increasingly adopted around the world due to their environment friendly characteristic and relatively inexpensive costs. The inevitable trend of increasing EV charging demand brings both challenges and opportunities to the electric power grid, especially distribution systems where EVs are directly connected. Distribution systems can face overloading and congestion, increasing power losses, voltage drop, and voltage unbalance if the EV charging demand are not well handled, which will cause equipment damage and low power reliability and quality for customers. Thus, the accommodation of EVs is of great importance to distribution systems from both technical side and financial side. Meanwhile, EVs are much different from traditional load based on their temporal and location flexibility. The flexibility of charging power, charging location and the battery storage of EVs can be used to provide services to different parties, such as distribution system operator (DSO), transmission system operator (TSO) and renewable energy sources (RES), which can bring extra financial benefits for EV owners. To integrate EVs effectively in distribution system operation, we first investigate how to build EV charging stations to accommodate large amount of fast charging demand from EV with minimum negative impact on the distribution system hosting capacity. We then investigate how to schedule EVs charging and discharging power to provide services to DSO, including coordinating EVs and photovoltaic (PVs) to solve voltage issues in distribution system in a decentralized way, and evaluating ancillary services EVs can provide in a common DSO-TSO market. Our next step will be optimal scheduling and flexibility quantification of EV charging/discharging in coordination with RES to provide service to DSO which can help delay system upgrade and reinforcement.