A New Day-Ahead Scheduling Approach for Smart EV Parking Lots

Commercial electric vehicle (EV) chargers aim to provide a better charging solution compared to residential chargers. However, even with low penetration, they add considerable stress on the electric grid and can cause severe consequences. One of the possible solutions is to coordinate the charging process and even allow discharging. In this paper, the optimal day-ahead operation of several smart EV parking lots is considered in an active distribution network. The proposed approach aims to maximize the daily profit through admission and scheduling of the best suitable requests to the proper EV charger in the parking lot. Moreover, bidirectional power flow is considered to minimize stress on the grid during peak hours. Furthermore, the proposed approach considers a practical scenario with different types of chargers installed in a parking lot. Thus, one of the proposed approach tasks is to assign the EVs to the proper charger, which is the main contribution of this work. Simulation results in a typical distribution system demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.