The Simultaneous Impact of EV Charging and PV Inverter Reactive Power on the Hosting Distribution System’s Performance: A Case Study in Kuwait

Abstract

Recently, electric vehicles (EVs) have become an increasingly important topic in the field of sustainable transportation research, alongside distributed generation, reactive power compensation, charging optimization, and control. The process of loading on existing power system infrastructures with increasing demand requires appropriate impact indices to be analyzed. This paper studies the impact of integrating electric vehicle charging stations (EVCSs) into a residential distribution network. An actual case study is modeled to acquire nodal voltages and feeder currents. The model obtains the optimal integration of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels with charging stations while considering reactive power compensation. The impact of EV integration for the case study results in two peaks, which show a 6.4% and 17% increase. Varying the inverter to the PV ratio from 1.1 to 2 decreases system losses by 34% to 41%. The type of charging is dependent on the maximum penetration of EVCSs that the network can install without system upgrades. Increasing the number of EVCSs can cause an increase in power system losses, which is dependent on the network architecture. Installing PV reduces the load peak by 21%, and the installation of PV with consideration of reactive power control increases system efficiency and power delivery.