Operation Modes for the Electric Vehicle in Smart Grids and Smart Homes: Present and Proposed Modes

This paper presents the main operation modes for an electric vehicle (EV) battery charger framed in smart grids and smart homes, i.e., present-day and new operation modes that can represent an asset toward EV adoption are discussed and proposed, respectively. Apart from the well-known grid-to-vehicle (G2V) and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) operation modes, this paper proposes two new operation modes: home-to-vehicle (H2V), where the EV battery charger current is controlled according to the current consumption of the electrical appliances of the home (this operation mode is combined with G2V and V2G), and vehicle-for-grid (V4G), where the EV battery charger is used for compensating current harmonics or reactive power, simultaneously with the G2V and V2G operation modes. The vehicle-to-home (V2H) operation mode, where the EV can operate as a power source in isolated systems or as offline uninterruptible power supply to feed priority appliances of the home during power outages of the electrical grid, is presented in this paper and framed with the other operation modes. These five operation modes were validated through experimental results using a developed 3.6-kW bidirectional EV battery charger prototype, which was specially designed for these operation modes. This paper describes the developed EV battery charger prototype, detailing the power theory and the voltage and current control strategies used in the control system. This paper also presents experimental results for the various operation modes, both in steady state and during transients.