Understanding the effects of EV management and TOU tariffs on customers and distribution networks

The adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) poses technical challenges for our distribution networks, which were not designed to cope with the new EV charging demand. To enable high penetrations of EVs without affecting the networks, two approaches are investigated in this paper: a direct approach that manages EV chargers, and an indirect approach that uses Time-of-Use (TOU) tariffs. To evaluate the corresponding effects on both customers and distribution networks, a real Australian MV-LV network with 1,300+ single-phase households is used in the case study. The results show that, if every house in the studied network has an EV (i.e., 100% EV penetration) with unmanaged charging, technical issues will occur mainly in the LV part. On the other hand, both direct and indirect approaches can eliminate network issues, with limited impacts on customer charging. The findings also suggest that distribution companies can hugely benefit from mixing direct and indirect approaches.