Joint Planning of a Distribution System and a Charging Network for Electric Vehicles

Abstract

The spatial-temporal distribution of electric vehicle (EV) charging loads can be improved by implementing optimized charging scheduling, and by the joint planning of a distribution network (DN) and a charging network of EVs. In this paper, such a joint planning scheme was studied and modeled as two-level optimization model. In the upper level of the optimization, a joint planning model of a DN and a charging network of EVs with distributed photovoltaic (PV) systems and/or energy storage (ES) units is constructed to minimize the total cost. Then the optimized results of the DN and the EV charging network construction plan are used as the inputs of the lower-level operation model. In the lower-level operation optimization, an optimal charging scheduling approach is proposed to minimize the sum of the DN’s operation cost and the traffic congestion cost. The spatial-temporal distribution of the charging demand, under an optimized charging strategy, is used as feedback for the upper-level optimization model, which effectively can reduce the scale of the DN and the charging network construction. The proposed joint planning model was demonstrated through applications in a city in China.