Power Quality Impact of Renewable Energy based Generators and Electric Vehicles on Distribution Systems

This paper presents a power quality analysis on the effects of high penetration of electric vehicle charging stations (EVCSs) and renewable energy based generators (REGs) which include wind turbines, grid-connected photovoltaic and fuel cell power generation units on the 16-bus test distribution system. All data on EVCS, wind farm, photovoltaic and fuel cell units as well as weather conditions were collected from various manufacturers and the Malaysian Meteorological Department. The system is modeled and simulated using the MATLAB/Simulink software and the effects of the REGs and EVCS technologies on system performances were investigated for various penetration levels and at different loading and weather conditions. Simulation results indicated that the presence of high penetration EVCS and REGs can cause severe power quality problems such as frequency and voltage fluctuations, voltage drop, harmonic distortion and power factor reduction.