Optimal dispatch of a mobile storage unit to support electric vehicles charging stations

As transportation electrification increases globally, new technologies emerged in the past few years to meet the growth of the electricity demand. Mobile Energy Storage Systems (MESS) offer versatile solutions, aiding distribution systems with reactive power, renewables integration, and peak shaving. An MESS can be utilized to serve electric vehicles (EVs) in different parking lots (PLs), in addition to supplying power to the grid during overloads. The task of multiple stationary units can be achieved using MESS at a relatively lower cost. This paper proposes an MESS owned by multiple PLs sharing the same geographical area and sharing its capital and operational cost. The main objective of the proposed approach is to dispatch the MESS in conjunction with optimal EVs’ charging coordination to minimize operational costs and address the extra demand of PLs. A mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem is formulated and solved. Considering electricity price variations and EVs uncertainties, three different case studies are performed to highlight the efficiency and success of the proposed approach. The simulation results in a huge reduction in the total operation cost and the savings reach up to 27.51% in comparison with the base case.