The Impact of Electric Vehicles on Utilities (original) (raw)

Interest in electric transportation has increased dramatically in recent years because of its high efficiency, its pollution free operation, and its contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The prospect of large‐scale deployment of electric vehicles (EVs) raises significant issues for electric utilities. Some of the biggest challenges are the demand on both the capacity of charging an EV takes and the timing when it would be charged, the harmonics injected by the chargers of the EVs, the impact of EVs on the stability of the utilities, the impact on the voltage regulation of the utilities, overloading of distribution transformers, and increasing the losses in the utility power systems. On the other hand, the EVs have a positive impact on the utilities manifested in the possibility of using EVs as distributed energy storage, using them to control the system frequency, the possibility of using them as a source of energy to meet the peak demand using the V2G concept, and increased energy security by displacing imported petroleum‐derived fuel with domestically produced electricity. The purpose of this paper is to shed some light on the negative and how to solve them, as well as the positive impact of EVs on the utilities.