Comparing Charging Management Strategies for a Charging Station in a Parking Area in North Italy

Via the analysis of a set of parking and journey information for vehicles traveling to the parking site at the University of Brescia (Italy), we evaluated the possibility of managing the electric recharging of these vehicles, which are hypothesized to be electric. The paper investigates charging optimization techniques that can limit the charge power peaks and distribute the energy demand throughout the day. A cost assessment for an auxiliary system consisting of a photovoltaic energy source (PV) and battery stationary storage (BSS) is also carried out. Optimal power management at the station with PV and BSS is introduced, and the performance of two feedback controllers based on the optimized results is compared with that of a real-time management algorithm in the presence of randomness in charging requests and insolation. The results show that the BSS degradation cost plays a primary role in determining the strategy to adopt to minimize the operating expenditure of a charging station.