The increasing penetration of plug-in electric vehicles (EVs), including battery EVs and plug-in hybrid EVs, imposes a significant load on the low-voltage distribution grid, which consists of the low-voltage transformers and substations at a specific site. Accommodating the charging demands of EVs will involve expensive upgrades to local distribution systems. Nonetheless, vehicle-grid integration (VGI) enables EVs to provide grid services such as peak load shaving and to maintain an affordable and reliable distribution grid. To achieve this goal, EVs must have capabilities to manage charging or support two-way interaction between vehicles and the grid, which are referred to as “managed charging” and “vehicle-to-grid” (V2G).

The Electric Vehicles on the Grid Simulator is a model-based simulator that provides two main functions, as shown in the figure as below:

• It helps individual building energy managers, facility owners, distribution service operators, charging point operators, and fleet operators quantify the future EV load impacts on transformers or substations at a specific site—for example, a residential neighborhood or an office building. It will also inform future low-voltage network upgrades, ensuring that EV load impacts do not exceed the current capacities of transformers and substations.
• It helps individual building energy managers, facility owners, distribution service operators, and charging point operators manage and optimize individual EV charging and discharging profiles through VGI measures to delay or possibly avoid expensive network upgrades (known as “distribution deferral”), reduce overall costs for electricity (known as “retail energy time shift”), or consume on-site solar by leveraging EVs as a behind-the-meter energy storage system. In this case, the optimized EV charging and discharging profiles generated from the tool can be sent to charging points to directly manage the charging (or discharging) time and power of each EV.

The tool is not capable of modeling stationary storages or demand flexibility in buildings.

Figure. Purposes of the Simulator