Electric vehicles as distributed energy storage for local energy management

Even though the Li-ion battery price has dropped significantly in recent years, this storage technology is still quite expensive and, in order to avoid overspending, this study proposes using EV’s batteries as Battery Energy Storage System. One of the main disadvantages of this scheme is that the total available battery’s capacity is variable, but it is dependent on the EV’s mobility. In this chapter, an optimization model is developed to minimize the electricity cost purchased from the utility grid by the building manager. This optimization model takes into account several parameters: the availability of the EVs parked at the parking lot (that affects the available storage capacity, which varies at each time period, as EVs come and go along the day), the total energy consumption demanded by the building, the self -PV generation and, finally, the retail energy prices. With this information, the optimization algorithm determines how the EV batteries’ charge/ discharge of all parked vehicles should be managed to minimize the cost of electricity purchased from the grid.