Electric Vehicles at Scale Consortium Smart Charge Management and Vehicle Grid Integration

Electric vehicle (EV) adoption will expand beyond light-duty vehicles charging at lower-power public locations and family residences to include medium- and heavy-duty applications with more powerful charging at public stations and private depots. The Vehicle Grid Integration (VGI) and Smart Charge Management (SCM) focus areas will develop and evaluate enabling technologies, charging solutions, and infrastructure design approaches to investigate the intricacies and potential benefits of vehicle grid integration and the application of smart charge management to charging of electric vehicles at scale.

The increase in higher-power electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) can potentially disrupt the grid. However, the effects can be mitigated through both grid planning strategies and vehicle control methods, also known as VGI and SCM. These concepts were demonstrated in the RECHARGE and Smart VGI Projects.

The optimal VGI or SCM solution to integrate EV charging will depend on several factors such as travel patterns, charging infrastructure, and grid characteristics, which will vary by vehicle class, application, and vocation.