Design, Simulation, and Optimization of EV Fast Charging Stations

PI: Abbas El Gamal; Co-PI: Ram Rajagopal; Students: Lily Buechler, Emmanuel Balogun, Thomas Navidi

Increasing deployment of fast-charging stations will have significant impacts on power distribution systems by increasing voltage violations and accelerating transformer aging and battery degradation. At the station level, these effects depend on the integrated modeling and control of all system components: charger power electronics, transformers, battery storage, driver behavior, the distribution system, and other distributed energy resources.

This project will focus on the development of station-level modeling and simulation capabilities. This will require the development of component-level models that can be calibrated from real data and the underlying physics and then integrated into a station-level simulation. These models will be used to develop optimization and control algorithms to address various operational objectives, such as reducing demand charges and energy costs and mitigating battery and transformer degradation as well as distribution system impacts.

This platform will be used to analyze various use cases, such as using co-located stationary storage to absorb power fluctuations from unpredictable fast charging. The tools developed from this project could aid utilities with charging station grid interconnection and help charging station providers reduce system costs while mitigating grid impacts. Consequently, this project will minimize demand spikes, which in turn reduces generation loads and carbon emissions in our fight against climate change.