A Corrective Strategy for Voltage Regulation in Distribution Grids with Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles

Abstract

The increasing integration of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) poses unique challenges for voltage and frequency regulation in electric distribution grids. The mobility and variability due to PHEV loads exacerbates the problem of voltage regulation in distribution grids that are characterized by high R/X ratios. Numerous studies have explored the impact of PHEV integration on distribution grids, corrective strategies have been mainly limited to designing constrained charging profiles. This thesis examines the effect of different charging profiles and then presents a corrective strategy for voltage regulation in distribution grids without specifically constraining a user's charging profile. The proposed scheme is based on reactive power management, utilizing voltage sensitivity analysis. The compensatory scheme calculates reactive (or active when available) power injection for a bus to ensure voltage regulation at the charging bus. Simulations on the IEEE-13 bus for the scheme provides significant improvements (up to 9 %) in voltage profiles.