Enabling Efficient Integration of Electric Vehicles In Qatarâ s Smart Grid: Planning, Operation, and Cybersecurity Grant uri icon

abstract

  • Given the high potential of the electric vehicle (EV) market, it was announced in September 2018 that the first plant for the production of EVs in the Middle East will be in Qatar. The investment announced to launch such a revolutionary project is up to $9 billion. As Qatar steps into this new ground, three major technical challenges need to be addressed to pave the way for a smooth integration of EVs on the roads of Qatar. This research project aims to provide technical answers to these three challenges that are formulated in terms of these questions: A) Where and when to allocate EV charging facilities in an economic way such that the EV charging load can be satisfied? B) How to efficiently coordinate the charging requests of EVs among the charging facilities in a way that does not stress the power grid? C) How to guarantee smooth operation of the EV charging facilities when the system is targeted by a cyber-attack? To answer the first research question, we look into the development of an efficient planning strategy for dynamic deployment of EV charging facilities. More flexibility is enabled when charging stations are deployed on the streets, which in turn encourages more customers to switch to EVs. Several studies have reported that the number of EVs traveling on the roads will evolve with time. As a result, dynamic allocation of EV charging stations should be performed progressively over both time and space, otherwise a loss of profit is expected. Unfortunately, the existing planning strategies do not reflect a dynamic spatio-temporal planning approach. Dynamic allocation ensures that the EV charging stations are efficiently utilized at each deployment stage, where the minimum number of stations is installed to satisfy the charging load requests at each stage. Furthermore, the allocation of these stations must be balanced with an increase in the power generation capacity. Hence, in this project, a dynamic spatio-temporal planning strategy will be proposed to jointly allocate EV charging stations and generation units in Qatarâ s power grid with the objectives to achieve minimum installation cost, maximum utilization efficiency of the charging stations, minimum blocking probability for the charging requests, and to satisfy the power grid technical constraints. The second research question deals with the implementation of a real-time EV charging coordination strategy. Several studies have indicated that if the EV charging process is not effectively managed, the local power distribution system will suffer from a significant stress. This is true even with a low penetration level of EVs. Coordinated charging of EVs represents a viable solution to relieve such a stress.........

date/time interval

  • 2020 - 2023