A Case Study For Connecting Bidirectional PEV Station for Reactive Power Support to the GLEAMM Prototype Microgrid

This paper presents a control strategy for reactive power support using Plug-in Electric Vehicles (PEV) as a case study for the Global Laboratory for Energy Asset Management and Manufacturing (GLEAMM) microgrid. The control topology is divided into two levels with a dynamic limitation. This Electric Vehicle (EV) station Charger has a topology including a full-bridge AC-DC rectifier and a bidirectional half-bridge DC-DC converter. In the first level, a PQ and power control are used for the AC/DC inverter and DC/DC converters, receiving the set-points for active and reactive power from the upper level. The second level is a central controller that is used to manage the reactive power at the microgrid and to provide the necessary power setpoints for the PEV. A dynamic limitation strategy is proposed to maximize the reactive power support maintaining a reasonable amount of active power to charge the EV battery, considering the maximum limitation of the AC/DC inverter. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy, simulation results from a three-phase system are simulated in Matlab/Simulink environment.