Contribution of electric vehicle supply infrastructures based on DC microgrid to internal and grid-side resilience

The integration of electric vehicles into the distribution network represents a challenging aspect in the transport decarbonization process. EV supply infrastructures equipped with photovoltaic system, energy storage device and electric vehicle charging stations in DC configuration are shown to be flexible and viable solution to mitigate the impact of EV penetration. In this paper, a methodology for the assessment of the potential impact of DC-based electric vehicle supply infrastructures on microgrid and distribution network resilience improvements is proposed. In particular, the adopted approach aims at determining optimal day-ahead operation plan for microgrids to plan the possible contribution to grid-side active power reserve to cope with grid load forecast error or internal reserve to cover PV production uncertainty. A proper objective function to pursue techno-economic targets is defined, and the formulated optimization problem, based on mixed integer linear programming, accounts for technical constraints in a centralized manner. The proposed procedure is tested, with the technical features of a DC microgrid demonstrator, on a realistic distribution network.