A PEV Emulation Approach to Development and Validation of Grid Friendly Optimized Automated Load Control Vehicle Charging Systems

There are many challenges in implementing grid aware plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) charging systems with local load control. New opportunities for innovative load control were created as a result of changes to the 2014 National Electric Code (NEC) about automatic load control definitions for EV charging infrastructure. Stakeholders in optimized dispatch of EV charging assets include the end users (EV drivers), site owner/operators, facility managers and utilities. NEC definition changes allow for ‘over subscription’ of more potential EV charging station load than can be continuously supported if the total load at any time is within the supply system safety limit. Local load control can be implemented via compact submeter(s) with locally hosted control algorithms using direct communication to the managed electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE). This paper is constrained to only AC charging, from grid to vehicle, in a modestly sized system, extensible to larger meshes of EV charging stations. One of the challenges is to validate dynamic load control of groups of EVSEs and failure mode handling preventing inadvertent overload of the distribution system. This paper describes a modular plug in electric vehicle (PEV) emulation solution that allows design of experiments to validate load controls.