Impact of EV penetration on Volt–VAR Optimization of distribution networks using real-time co-simulation monitoring platform

•EV penetration impact on quasi real-time Volt–VAR Optimization (VVO) of distribution grids is investigated.•Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI)-based VVO solution is fully introduced in this paper.•EV types, mixes and ZIP modeling are explained to accurately model EVs and loads.•Impacts of EV on different AMI-based VVO objective function sub-parts are studied.•A co-simulation platform is presented to check EV penetrations on AMI-based VVO operating scenarios.