Empowering microgrids for sustainable transportation electrification: A comprehensive methodology for resource adequacy and grid resilience

Abstract

Transportation electrification has emerged as a pivotal solution to mitigate carbon emissions from the transportation sector. However, this shift towards electric vehicles (EVs) presents significant challenges for municipalities and utilities, particularly in ensuring the electrical grid's capacity to meet the increased demand. In this sense, this work introduces a novel methodology to address these challenges by 1) quantifying the impact of EVs on the hosting capacity (HC) of residential microgrids (MGs), and 2) proposing a novel control strategy to meet grid resource adequacy requirements under high levels of transportation electrification. For this, first, a simplified approach to quantify the overall demand in residential MGs, accounting for the influence of EVs and typical demand profiles based on real-world data from municipalities and utility systems is developed. Second, a new frequency controller is introduced, utilizing Distributed Phasor Measurement Units (D-PMU) and mobile energy sources (MES) to ensure compliance with resource adequacy requirements under high levels of EVs penetration. The proposed controller takes advantage of the low latency and high-resolution capabilities of D-PMU technology to enable the harnessing of MES, preventing critical frequency nadir events, and improving the overall system resource adequacy performance under both transient and steady-state analysis. Real-world data from Seattle, WA, USA, is used in the developed case studies, and comparative analysis between traditional SCADA, state-of-the-art D-PMU-based controller, and the proposed controller is presented. The obtained results indicate that significant improvements are achieved by the proposed controller, empowering utilities to ensure reliable operations amidst transportation electrification challenges imposed on resource adequacy.