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Photovoltaics (PV) and electric vehicles (EVs) are two emerging technologies often considered as cornerstones in the energy and transportation systems of future sustainable cities. They both have to be integrated into the power systems and be operated together with already existing loads and generators and, often, into buildings, where they potentially impact the overall energy performance of the buildings. Thus, a high penetration of both PV and EVs poses new challenges. Understanding of the synergies between PV, EVs and existing electricity consumption is therefore required. Recent research has shown that smart charging of EVs could improve the synergy between PV, EVs and electricity consumption, leading to both technical and economic advantages. Considering the growing interest in this field, this review paper summarizes state-of-the-art studies of smart charging considering PV power production and electricity consumption. The main aspects of smart charging reviewed are objectives, configurations, algorithms and mathematical models. Various charging objectives, such as increasing PV utilization and reducing peak loads and charging cost, are reviewed in this paper. The different charging control configurations, i.e., centralized and distributed, along with various spatial configurations, e.g., houses and workplaces, are also discussed. After that, the commonly employed optimization techniques and rule-based algorithms for smart charging are reviewed. Further research should focus on finding optimal trade-offs between simplicity and performance of smart charging schemes in terms of control configuration, charging algorithms, as well as the inclusion of PV power and load forecast in order to make the schemes suitable for practical implementations.

The integration of photovoltaic (PV) and electric vehicle (EV) charging in residential buildings has increased in recent years. At high latitudes, both pose new challenges to the residential power systems due to the negative correlation between household load and PV power production and the increase in household peak load by EV charging. EV smart charging schemes can be an option to overcome these challenges. This paper presents a distributed and a centralized EV smart charging scheme for residential buildings based on installed photovoltaic (PV) power output and household electricity consumption. The proposed smart charging schemes are designed to determine the optimal EV charging schedules with the objective to minimize the net load variability or to flatten the net load profile. Minimizing the net load variability implies both increasing the PV self-consumption and reducing the peak loads. The charging scheduling problems are formulated and solved with quadratic programming approaches. The departure and arrival time and the distance covered by vehicles in each trip are specifically modeled based on available statistical data from the Swedish travel survey. The schemes are applied on simulated typical Swedish detached houses without electric heating. Results show that both improved PV self-consumption and peak load reduction are achieved. The aggregation of distributed smart charging in multiple households is conducted, and the results are compared to the smart charging for a single household. On the community level, both results from distributed and centralized charging approaches are compared.

Photovoltaic (PV) systems and electric vehicles (EVs) integrated in local distribution systems are considered to be two of the keys to a sustainable future built environment. However, large-scale integration of PV generation and EV charging loads poses technical challenges for the distribution grid. Each grid has a specific hosting capacity limiting the allowable PV and EV share. This paper presents a combined PV-EV grid integration and hosting capacity assessment for a residential LV distribution grid with four different energy management system (EMS) scenarios: (1) without EMS, (2) with EV smart charging only, (3) with PV curtailment only, and (4) with both EV smart charging and PV curtailment. The combined PV-EV hosting capacity is presented using a novel graphical approach so that both PV and EV hosting capacity can be analyzed within the same framework. Results show that the EV smart charging can improve the hosting capacity for EVs significantly and for PV slightly. While the PV curtailment can improve the hosting capacity for PV significantly, it cannot improve the hosting capacity for EVs at all. From the graphical analysis, it can be concluded that there is a slight positive correlation between PV and EV hosting capacity in the case of residential areas.

The integration of photovoltaic (PV) systems and electric vehicles (EVs) in the built environment, including at workplaces, has increased significantly in the recent decade and has posed new technical challenges for the power system, such as increased peak loads and component overloading. Several studies show that improved matching between PV generation and EV load through both optimal sizing and operation of PV-EV systems can minimize these challenges. This paper presents an optimal PV-EV sizing framework for workplace solar powered charging stations considering load matching performances. The proposed optimal sizing framework in this study uses a novel score, called self-consumption-sufficiency balance (SCSB), which conveys the balance between self-consumption (SC) and self-sufficiency (SS), based on a similar principle as the F1-score in machine learning. A high SCSB score implies that the system is close to being self-sufficient without exporting or curtailing a large share of local production. The results show that the SCSB performance tends to be higher with a larger combined PV-EV size. In addition to presenting PV-EV optimal sizing at the workplace charging station, this study also assesses a potential SC and SS enhancement with optimal operation through smart charging schemes. The results show that smart charging schemes can significantly improve the load matching performances by up to 42.6 and 40.8 percentage points for SC and SS, respectively. The smart charging scheme will also shift the combined optimal PV-EV sizes. Due to its simplicity and universality, the optimal sizing based on SCSB score proposed in this study can be a benchmark for future studies on optimal sizing of PV-EV system, or distributed generation-load in general.

Renewable energy sources (RES) and electric vehicles (EVs) are two promising technologies that are widely recognized as key components for achieving sustainable cities. However, intermittent RES generation and increased peak load due to EV charging can pose technical challenges for the power systems. Many studies have shown that improved load matching through energy system optimization can minimize these challenges. This paper assesses the optimal urban-scale energy matching potentials in a net-zero energy city powered by wind and solar energy, considering three EV charging scenarios: opportunistic charging, smart charging, and vehicle-to-grid (V2G). This paper takes a city on the west coast of Sweden as a case study. The smart charging and V2G schemes in this study aim to minimize the mismatch between generation and load and are formulated as quadratic programming problems. Results show that the optimal load matching performance is achieved in a net-zero energy city with the V2G scheme and a wind-PV electricity production share of 70:30. The load matching performance is increased from 68% in the opportunistic charging scenario to 73% in the smart charging scenario and to 84% in the V2G scenario. It is also shown that a 2.4 GWh EV battery participating in the V2G scheme equals 1.4 GWh stationary energy storage in improving urban-scale load matching performance. The findings in this paper indicate a high potential from EV flexibility in improving urban energy system performance.