Smart charging of electric vehicles considering photovoltaic power production and electricity consumption: A review

Photovoltaics (PV) and electric vehicles (EVs) are two emerging technologies often considered as cornerstones in the energy and transportation systems of future sustainable cities. They both have to be integrated into the power systems and be operated together with already existing loads and generators and, often, into buildings, where they potentially impact the overall energy performance of the buildings. Thus, a high penetration of both PV and EVs poses new challenges. Understanding of the synergies between PV, EVs and existing electricity consumption is therefore required. Recent research has shown that smart charging of EVs could improve the synergy between PV, EVs and electricity consumption, leading to both technical and economic advantages. Considering the growing interest in this field, this review paper summarizes state-of-the-art studies of smart charging considering PV power production and electricity consumption. The main aspects of smart charging reviewed are objectives, configurations, algorithms and mathematical models. Various charging objectives, such as increasing PV utilization and reducing peak loads and charging cost, are reviewed in this paper. The different charging control configurations, i.e., centralized and distributed, along with various spatial configurations, e.g., houses and workplaces, are also discussed. After that, the commonly employed optimization techniques and rule-based algorithms for smart charging are reviewed. Further research should focus on finding optimal trade-offs between simplicity and performance of smart charging schemes in terms of control configuration, charging algorithms, as well as the inclusion of PV power and load forecast in order to make the schemes suitable for practical implementations.