Control de frecuencia mediante gestión de demanda durante el proceso de carga lenta en vehículos eléctricos

Abstract

Around the world, Climate Change has driven a growing trend in the use of renewable energies. Within the set of initiatives to reduce carbon emissions, the use of electric vehicles plays an important role, because they can deliver zero emission of polluting gases and they promote the development of renewable energy sources which are necessary to recharge their batteries. Ecuador, due to its geographical characteristics and specially by its water resources, has a capacity to generate enough electricity to cover the country’s current demand, therefore this is a convenient region to support the introduction of EVs. Although the use of electric vehicles brings great advantages in terms of reducing environmental impacts, it is necessary to take into account the potential problems that their mass introduction will cause in the country’s electricity grid, where an expected result would be the high demand for power consumption during peak hours. Thus, next work focuses on the analysis and development of a primary frequency regulation algorithm during the slow charging process of electric vehicles. The proposed algorithm aims to help reduce the generation/demand difference which would allow maintaining the quality of the electricity grid within the ranges established by the CONELEC. The slow charging station used for this work operates with a maximum power of 4.8kW, but is possible to reduce it according of the grid’s features and the vehicule which is charging at the same time, such as reductions in the frequency due to overloads in the grid. At this point is where the primary frequency control comes into play,in this research the frequency measurement algorithm known as Fast Fourier Transform is used, which was implemented in an Arduino Due and whose response allows modifying the load reference sent to the electric vehicle. Experimental tests for this thesis were carried out in the Balzay Micro grid Laboratory of the University of Cuenca, which has the necessary equipment for its development. The implementation of the algorithm exhibit positive results, since the decrease in power consumption of the electric vehicle took place within the established ranges, where for every 0.3 Hz reduced in the frequency of electricity grid, power consumption of the electric vehicle was reduced 12.5 %. In addition, the response time that the algorithm requires to reduce the power consumption was measured, which is 10 seconds and this is within the operating range of the primary frequency control