Energy Management Strategy for Electric Vehicles and Connected Renewable Energy Systems in a Micro Grid Environment of a University Campus

Integrated systems with electric vehicles (EVs) and renewable energy sources are being widely considered as a first step building smart cities. A micro grid environment with wind, batteries, solar PV, and grid can be considered to together supply/store energy in the presence of EVs and home load demand. In such a case the role of an Energy Management Strategy (EMS) in combination with reliable forecasting is vital. Energy Management Strategy has been widely considered in literature mainly designed from the grid perspective. Considering the constraints associated with the EVs such as driving routes, charging facilities, and user driving patterns, EMS can be designed to suit the driver/vehicle requirements. The goal of this contribution is to conceptualize an EMS for university campus as example. Here, aspects of optimal charge scheduling of the connected EVs to minimize the customer’s electricity costs are crucial. The multi-objective, multi-constraint, EMS problem guides optimal energy flows between the sub-systems, considering the intermittency of supply/demand, stochastic nature of EV arrival times and energy cost. The main idea is to include and to combine user preferences to design the EMS from vehicle’s and grid perspectives. Another focus is to maximize the use of renewables and minimize grid dependency.