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Plug-in Electric Vehicle Charging Coordination Considering Distribution

Protection System

Conference Paper · October 2018

DOI: 10.1109/APPEEC.2018.8566658

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 2018 IEEE PES Asia-Pacific Power and Energy Engineering Conference (APPEEC)

Plug-in Electric Vehicle Charging Coordination

Considering Distribution Protection System
Mir Toufikur Rahman Norshahrani bin Abd Rahim Mohamadariff Othman
Department of Electrical Engineering Department of Electrical Engineering Department of Electrical Engineering
University of Malaya University of Malaya University of Malaya
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
m.toufikrahman@siswa.um.edu.my shahraniar@jkr.gov.my mohamadariff@um.edu.my

Hazlie Mokhlis
Department of Electrical Engineering
University of Malaya
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
hazli@um.edu.my

Abstract—Plug-in Electric vehicles (PEVs) imposed an extra-
large electricity demand in distribution system. The high
penetration of PEV charging could significantly stress the
distribution system and causes severe voltage fluctuations,
excessive power loss, line current and system overloading.
Typically, in distribution system, the overcurrent relay is set
25% higher than the nominal current. Without proper control
of PEV charging, the nominal current could be higher than
nominal current. This will cause tripping of overcurrent relay
and interrupted the charging of PEV. This paper proposes
real-time multi-objective PEV charging coordination
considering protective device constraints with aim to
prevent power interruption which might be due to
protection system failure.
Keywords— Protective device, PEV coordination, Overcurrent
relay, Multi-objective.
I. INTRODUCTION
Plug-in Electric Vehicles (PEVs) -one of the most
promising low emission vehicles are getting popularity in
recent years. Diminishing natural oil and fossil fuel reserves
around the world, rising oil costs have driven the car
manufacturer to introduce PEV. Basically, PEV utilizes large
battery capacity which requires frequent charging to drive
higher power rated motors. The PEV loads are considered as
extra-large electrical consumption on distribution system.
Theses charging activities could significantly stress the
distribution system causing severe voltage fluctuations,
excessive power loss and substation transformer overloading.
Moreover, fuse blowouts, system blackouts may happen
frequently due to uncoordinated PEV charging.
Consequently, the overall performance of the system
efficiency is degraded [1].
In support of this PEV integration on distribution system,
control schemes of PEV charging is proposed considering
various objectives. A decentralized control has been proposed
in [2] to minimize the charging cost for users and to decrease
load variance using a noncooperative game approach for a
building. Similarly, to fill the maximum demand at the off-
peak hours optimally, [3] proposes an iterative algorithm. A
game theoretic approach algorithm has applied in [4] to
minimize the overall charging cost for all PEVs. In this
research, the PEV owners driving pattern has been
considered. Moreover, a multi-level optimization is adapted
in [5] to achieve valley-filling effect using price signals
scheme. A linear optimal solution is proposed in [6] to
minimize the gap between maximum demand and the demand
created by PEVs activities. An intelligent charging algorithm
based on meta-heuristic method is proposed in [7] to
minimize generation costs. Research in [8] also aim to
minimize the generation cost associated power loss and
voltage deviation. In this paper, maximum sensitivities
selection (MSS) originated from the combination of heuristic
method and objective function is employed. Moreover,
convex optimization is used to solve the algorithm while
quadratic and dynamic programming are used in [9] to
minimize the power losses and voltage deviations.
From the reviews of optimal PEV charging, all of the
researches are more concerned on the issues of power loss,
voltage, charging cost and capacity constraints. None
considered the impact of protection system and devices in
determining/coordinating PEV charging. Without
consideration of protection system constraints, failure of
charging could happen due to operation of protection system
that lead to system blackout [10]. During PEV charging, the
current magnitude may exceed the nominal value of current
set in the protection system. This will cause relay tripping and
cut power supply at the protected area [11]. Thus, protection
system and its settings must be considered in the PEV
charging coordination.
In support above mentioned issues, the main contribution
of this paper is to formulate a multi-objective PEV charging
coordination considering protection devices constraints in the
distribution system. The objectives consist of minimizing the
total power loss as well as the gap between maximum demand
of the system and demand created by the PEV charging
activities. The PEV charging coordination problem is
determined in near real-time (each 5minutes interval) which
is a binary/discrete and nonlinear problem. Also, a fuzzy
membership function is used to transform differently-scaled

978-1-5386-5686-0/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE 51

 2018 IEEE PES Asia-Pacific Power and Energy Engineering Conference (APPEEC)

objective functions into the same scale of [0, 1]. The main III. PROBLEM FORMULATION
contribution of this paper is to consider protection devices The coordination of PEV charging activities is a real-time
and its settings when a multi-objective PEV charging and dynamic problem in power system. To implement the
coordination is made. charging coordination, a fast optimization method and a
II. PROTECTIVE DEVICES comprehensive objective function need to be considered. In
this paper, the optimization variable will decide which PEV
Protective devices are use in distribution network to will take charge at what time. The charging rate is assumed
isolate fault as fast as possible. All substations where buses different for every PEV types. However, it is worthy to
are located are equipped with protection system to safeguard mention that the charging rate is constant during the charging
the distribution network. Due to the overcurrent in the line progress. This paper considers 2 factors which are total power
during PEV charging, protection devices including fuse or loss and difference between maximum demand and demand
overcurrent relay will operate to protect the network from any created by the PEV charging activities. By weighting the
unwanted incident. Hence, it is important to consider the addition among these 2 factors, the objective function can be
protection system while performing the PEV charging described as follows:
coordination.
f min = w1 f 1 + w2 f 2 (3)
A. Overcurrent relay
Overcurrent relay is placed at the main feeder substation Here w1 and w 2 are weighting factors for objective functions
as the primary protection of the distribution network. In this f1 and f 2 respectively.
study, inverse-time overcurrent relay is considered. This kind
of relay operated in a time that is inversely proportional to the The first objective is to minimize the total power loss
fault current. Therefore, as the fault current increased, the during the PEV charging activities. The power loss equation
operating time of the relay is shorter. Besides, it will operate for the distribution system is presented by
when the magnitude of fault current is exceeded certain timeslot
specific value, called pickup current as shown in Equation 1. min f1 =  (I
t =1
2
b, t * Rb ) (4)
I pickup = OLF × I n (1)
The second objective is to minimize the gap between
Herein, OLF is overload factor, I pickup is pickup current maximum demand and demand created by the PEV charging
of the relay and I n is the current flow through the branch of activities. The equation can be written as follows
the relay at the normal operating condition. Moreover, the act m
of relay during the fault occur is depended on the ratio of fault
current to the pickup current in the branch, called Plug Setting
min f 2 = Pdemand − (P i =2
load + PPEV )i (5)

Multiplier (PSM) as shown in Equation 2.

A series of system constraints are needed to be satisfied
PSM = I R / I pickup (2) throughout the optimization process. The constraints are as
follows:
B. Reclosers
Protection device constraints: When the load current in
Recloser is a protection device that can detect the phase any condition exceeds the allowable current through the fuses
and phase-to-earth overcurrent condition. It is self-controlled or pickup current of relay or recloser, the power delivery to
device which can interrupt the system if the fault is still the load will be interrupted due to the trip of the protective
remain in the system after a predetermined time. There are device.
two type of operation modes for recloser, fast trip and delayed
trip mode. Generally, the fast trip mode is used to make sure OLF ar * I i < I pickup (6)
the safety of downstream fuses against temporary faults while
delayed trip mode is used to as secondary protection for them. where, I i is the total current flow through the device,
C. Fuses OLFar stands for the over load factor which is observed after
Fuse is a simple overcurrent device that consisted of a PEV charging coordination.
metal fusible link in it. The metal fusible link will melt and Maximum demand constraints:
open when the current passed through it exceeded a specific
threshold value. Generally, fuses are placed at the beginning
m
of branches.
Pdemand ≥  (P load + PPEV )i (7)
D. Coordination of Protection Devices i =2

In the coordination of time-current devices, it needs to Here, m is representing the number of branches. Pload,1
ensure that, the primary protection will operate before backup
protection. Moreover, only the affected area caused by represents the household load and PPEV ,i stands for the power
overcurrent or fault will be separated from the rest of the consumption by PEV at i th node and Pdemand is the maximum
system. Although, the coordination principle for different
demand level at the substation transformer during a day.
protection devices varies in distribution system. Among them
are fuse-fuse coordination, recloser-fuse coordination and
relay coordination.

52
 2018 IEEE PES Asia-Pacific Power and Energy Engineering Conference (APPEEC)
Voltage constraints:
V min ≤ Vi ≤ V max
Vmin and V max are the minimum and maximum allowable
voltage range in the distribution system respectively. In this
paper, the voltage limits are specified to ±10% (considered
0.9 pu to 1.1 pu).
SOC constraints:
SOC int < SOC curr ≤ SOC req
Here, SOCint is the initial level of state of charge at the
moment of plugging the battery, SOC req is the requested state
of charge set by the customer and SOC curr is the state of
charge, measured after each Δt timeslot.
IV. METHODOLOGY
The main contribution of this research is to perform a
multi-objective optimal PEV charging coordination
considering protection constraints in the distribution system.
The optimal PEV charging coordination strategy of [12]
employing Binary Particle Swarm Optimization (BPSO) is
used. Since the objective function f1 plays more important
role than objective function f 2 , a higher weighting factor of
w1 = 0.7 is assigned to f1 and a lower weighting factor of
w1 = 0.3 is assigned to f 2 in Equation 3. In order to achieve
the objective, the following procedures are taken.
Step 1: Calculate the nominal current flow through the
branches without PEV charging activities and define the
protection settings.
Step 2: Perform uncoordinated PEV charging activities
on distribution system with and without considering
protection constraints. Observe the impact of protection
constraints uncoordinated charging.
Step 3: Perform PEV charging coordination considering
protection constraints and record the performance of the
coordination.
Step 4: Consider protection constraints and perform
multi-objective PEV charging coordination.
Fig. 1: Daily load profile and random PEV arrival at the distribution system
V. SIMULATION RESULTS
(8) The 449-node smart grid topology in Fig. 2 is used to
demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed. The test
system is IEEE 31 node 23 kV distribution system including
6 lateral branches. The daily maximum load in each
individual node is considered to be 2 kW maintaining the
power factor 0.9 [8]. The daily load profile and random PEV
arrival in the system is shown in Fig. 1. It has 22 low voltage
feeders with 19 node each of 415V, populated with 264
(9) number of PEVs at 63% penetration. The network data,
parameters, PEV charger capacity, battery sizes are taken
from [13]. The backward forward sweep load flow is
employed to calculate the power loss, line currents and node
voltages of the system. Location of the protective devices in
this network is chosen from [14]. An overcurrent relay is used
in the substation and five fuses are placed at the beginning of
each branch. The load current flowing through the protective
devices and relay settings are tabulated in Table I. The OLFar
is assumed to be 1.25 as considered in [14].
To demonstrate the proposed methodology, three
different case studies are conducted as follows (1) the
nominal network without PEV charging activities, (2)
uncoordinated PEV charging activities in the distribution
system, and (3) coordinated PEV charging activities
considering protection constraints.
Case 1: In case 1, daily total power loss, weakest node
voltage profile and maximum power consumption are
observed without PEV charging activities in the system. Fig.
3-5 showed the result where Table I presents the maximum
current flow through each protective device. During this case,
it is found that all protection devices are working properly.
Case 2: Uncoordinated or random PEV charging activities
causes several problems in distribution system such as system
overloading, extreme power loss, poor voltage profile etc. as
shown in Fig. 3-5. The maximum load current through each
protective device during a day are presented in column 4,
Table I. The substation transformer is found overloaded while
the voltage profile exceeds the lower limit of allowable range
of Equation 8. Due to the excessive demand, the extreme
large power loss happens in the system. On the other hand,
according to Fig. 6, all the fuses and relay are overloaded in
different time of the day which is marked in red color in the
bar chart. The relay which is the primary protection of
substation is overloaded from 19:00 to 23:00. As a result, the
whole network is being affected by power blackout during
that time. Furthermore, the power interruption happens in
some certain regions due to the tripping of fuses in lateral
branches. The tripping time for every fuse during the
uncoordinated PEV charging activities can be found in Fig. 6.
53
 2018 IEEE PES Asia-Pacific Power and Energy Engineering Conference (APPEEC)

23 kV/415 V 100 kVA

distribution transformer

Relay 2
F1
29 3

LV FEEDER 30 4
F2
LV FEEDER 5 23
31
LV FEEDER
LV FEEDER 6 24
22
LV FEEDER
F3 7 25
LV FEEDER
LV FEEDER
19 26
8
LV FEEDER
LV FEEDER 20 27
9
LV FEEDER Fig 4: Total System Power Loss
LV FEEDER 28
21
LV FEEDER
LV FEEDER F4
F5 10
16

11 LV FEEDER
LV FEEDER 17
LV FEEDER
12
LV FEEDER 18
13 LV FEEDER
LV FEEDER
n18 14 LV FEEDER
n17
n8 n12 n14 n16
15 LV FEEDER
n1
n5 n4 n2
n9
n7 n6 n3 LV FEEDER
n10 n11 n13 n15 n19

Fig. 2: 449-node smart grid consisting IEEE 31 node 23 kV system with 22

LV feeders and one-line diagram of one feeder connecting with PEV

Case 3: To overcome the negative impact of random PEV Fig 5: Total System Power Consumption
charging on distribution system, a multi-objective PEV
charging coordination is applied considering protection TABLE I: SETTING OF PROTECTIVE DEVICES AND OPERATION DURING PEV
CHARGING ACTIVITIES
constraints which reduce the system stress significantly. A
proper functioning of the protection system in this case is Current
Load
Max. load
performed to check the operation of protective devices and Protective current Load current
setting current in
device in case 1 in case 2 (A)
coordination. The obtained results are presented in Fig. 3-5 (A)
(A)
case 3 (A)
and Fig. 7. According to Fig. 5, the transformer is not F1 9 5.66 10.17@ 22:10 07.68@ 20:25
overloaded during the coordinated PEV charging activities.
Moreover, the weakest node voltage profile is much more F2 18 11.35 21.51@ 20:15 17.17@ 23:10
improved which can be observed in Fig. 3 and the total power F3 9 5.69 10.74@ 22:35 8.86@ 18:35
loss is considerably decreased in accordance with Fig. 4. On F4 18 11.44 22.43@ 22:20 16.61@ 23:25
the other hand, Fig. 7 presents the maximum current through
each protective device during a day and there is no tripping is F5 9 5.71 12.83@ 22:45 08.78@ 01:20
observed. It is also observed that from Table I, all the fuses Relay 68 41.77 74.50@ 22:20 42.77@ 18:40
are working properly and no power interruption happens in
the system.

Fig. 3: Weakest Node Voltage Profile Fig. 6: Maximum current flow through each protective device in
uncoordinated PEV charging

54
 2018 IEEE PES Asia-Pacific Power and Energy Engineering Conference (APPEEC)
Fig. 7: Maximum current flow through each protective device in
coordinated PEV charging
VI. CONCLUSION
This paper proposes real-time multi-objective PEV
charging coordination considering protection system
constraint. In this paper, simulation results show that if the
PEV charging is not properly managed, it affects the
distribution system performance as well as protective device.
It is found that, the protective devices trip due to over current
flow in different time of a day. Consequently, the power
interruption happens in the system. Therefore, protection
constraints are considered in the PEV charging coordination
for the continuous operation of the distribution network. This
paper uses BPSO as optimization tool and employs 449-node
smart grid as a test system to show effectiveness of the
proposed method. This paper presents optimal PEV charging
coordination to reduce the system stress such as power loss in
distribution system considering protection constraints.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors thank the University of Malaya, Malaysia,
for supporting this work through the research grant (RF013A-
2018).
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