Electric Vehicle Charging Stations and their Impact on the Power Quality of Utility Grid

Electric Vehicles (EVs) are like any other Internal Combustion (IC) engine vehicle running on the road, but unlike IC engine vehicles they are the main concern for electrical engineers because of their integration with the grid. The environmental benefits of EVs motivate more consumers to adopt EVs which leads to a major rise in the demand for EVs. To meet the rising demand there is a need for considerable EV charging stations. These EV charging stations when connected to the grid, inject harmonic, disturb the voltage and ultimately hamper the power quality (PQ) of the utility. In this paper, the impact of EV charging stations on the PQ of the utility grids is analyzed. The concerns like voltage sag and swell, harmonics, and power demand are observed and a mitigation technique is provided for improving the PQ of the utility.