On the Control of Energy Storage Systems for Electric Vehicles Fast Charging in Service Areas

TL;DR

This paper develops a real-time control strategy using model predictive control for energy storage in EV fast charging stations, optimizing power allocation and managing grid interactions with stability guarantees.

Contribution

It introduces a two-step MPC-based approach for energy storage control in EV charging, addressing both grid-connected and isolated scenarios with stability considerations.

Findings

Effective power deviation minimization in isolated mode

Mitigation of power flow issues when connected to grid

Stable storage state of charge maintained over time

Abstract

This paper presents a real time control strategy for energy storage systems integration in electric vehicles fast charging applications combined with generation from intermittent renewable energy sources. A two steps approach taking advantage of the model predictive control methodology is designed on purpose to optimally allocate the reference charging power while managing the priority among the plugged vehicles and then control the storage for efficiently sustaining the charging process. Two different use cases are considered: in the former the charging area is disconnected from the grid, so that the objective is to minimize the deviation of electric vehicles charging power from the nominal value; in the latter the focus is on the point of connection to the grid and the need of mitigating the related power flow. In both cases the fundamental requirement for feasible control system operation is to guarantee stability of the storage's state of charge over the time. Simulation results are provided and discussed in detail, showing the effectiveness of the proposed approach.