Assessing impacts of EV parking lots on distribution system reliability with consideration of user behavioral uncertainties

Abstract

In recent years, the popularization of electric vehicles (EVs) brings about the spring-up of chargeable parking lots (PLs). In practice, since a PL system with hundreds of integrated EVs may act as either a controllable load during the charging period or an alternative distributed energy resource for the grid during the discharging period, it could provide various technical and economic benefits which can be exploited by the future energy systems. Under this background, this paper carries out a study to analyze the potential contribution of EV PLs for the reliability of future distribution grids. Reliability indices are calculated using a stochastic generation capacity model of a PL together with the load and the component outage data of the distribution feeder. A compound algorithm based on sequential Monte-Carlo simulations is employed to implement the entire evaluation. Numerical results show that the appropriate utilization of PL energy storage capability can largely improve the supply adequacy of distribution systems, which proves the effectiveness of the proposed method.