Electric vehicle charging strategies in residential communities: Permissible penetration levels and emissions

This study investigates the impact of three electric vehicle (EV) charging strategies on distribution transformer overloading and charging emissions. Real-world GPS-tracked mobility profiles are used to simulate EV charging, and power balance simulations quantify transformer overloading for combinations of seven residential community sizes, four driver groups and five EV penetration levels. High spatio-temporal resolution emissions intensity data inform EV charging emissions estimates. Findings indicate that while all three charging strategies allow 20% EV penetration, greater penetration depends on community size and the charging strategy. The results further illustrate how grid operators can update transformer sizing conventions to accommodate 100% EV penetration. In the absence of local photovoltaic generation, charging slowly overnight minimizes transformer overloading but maximizes emissions, insinuating trade-offs. However, even with current levels of local PV generation, charging during sunshine hours may, on average, already emit and overload the least, mitigating trade-off concerns between distribution grids and the environment.