Impact Analysis of Electric Vehicle Charging and Demand Response Potential on a University Campus

Electric vehicles (EVs) are gaining popularity in Ireland, and it is expected that they will make up a significant portion of total consumer vehicles by 2030. This will lead to higher electricity demand and different load patterns within the distribution system. Significant research has been done to establish the effect this will have on distribution systems, especially on residential networks. In this paper, the impact of this change in load is instead analysed on a test system of shared parking lots in a university campus facility. The test system used is a good representation of an energy community as it includes renewable energy sources (RES) and has a high amount of data available for the distribution system and loads. A novel model of EV user behaviour is established specific to the test case. Based on the high level of monitoring and the EV user behaviour model, an accurate assessment of the impact of EV charging is established. Based on the results, the test case distribution system will run into congestion and overloading with uncontrolled charging of the predicted levels of EV penetration in Ireland. Recommendations to mitigate this are to deploy an energy community charging scheme based on a proposed business model and to explore further research on smart charging to establish an optimized charging schedule for EVs to reduce the peak power consumption level.