IEC-61850-based communication for integrated EV management in power systems with renewable penetration

As the number of EVs increases, their impact on electrical systems will be substantial. Novel management schemes are needed to manage the electrical load they require when charging. Literature is rich with different techniques to manage and control this effect on the grid by controlling and optimizing power flow. Although these solutions heavily rely on communication lines, they mostly treat communication as a black box. It is important to develop communication solutions that can integrate EVs, charging stations (CSs), and the rest of the grid in an interoperable way. A standard approach would be indispensable as there are different EV models manufactured by different companies. The IEC 61850 standard is a strong tool used for developing communication models for different smart grid components. However, it does not have the necessary models for implementing smart EV management schemes that coordinate between EVs and CSs. In this paper, these missing links are addressed through the development of corresponding models and message mapping. A hardware-in-the-loop test is performed to validate the communication models and cross-platform operation. Then, a co-simulation environment is used to perform a combined study of communication and the power system components. The developed communication model helps integrate the EVs to a centralized, coordinated voltage control scheme. These models can be used to run extensive impact studies where different domains of smart grids need to be considered simultaneously. The main contribution of this paper is the development of smartgrid communication solutions for enabling successful information exchanges.