A Novel Communication-Free Charge Controller for Electric Vehicles Using Support Vector Machines

Abstract

As electric vehicles (EVs) are attaining significant attention in the auto market, efforts worldwide are being made for their cordial integration with the evolving distribution systems. While EVs are lucrative for the society, their uncontrolled charging may cause significant challenges to the power grid. Large-scale integration of EVs introduces voltage stresses in the systems causing anomaly to the customer appliances. In this paper, a novel EV charger based on nodal voltage and its sensitivity-to-load changes is proposed. The EV charging rate is adjusted using support vector machine (SVM) to avoid voltage violations to happen. Furthermore, a fair charging pattern is ensured in-between the EVs available at other charging points in the power system. The proposed controller is implemented in seven-node test secondary distribution system. Moreover, different loading conditions are used to verify the robustness of the proposed EV charge controller. Simulation results prove the efficacy of the proposed charge controller under both light and heavy loading conditions. In addition, fairness is achieved for all the EVs regardless of their charging points.