Technical impacts of electric vehicles charging in an Italian distribution network

To prevent climate changes, the leaders of European Union declared environmental targets for 2020, known as 20-20-20 targets. These targets aim at a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption of the 2020 projected levels, as well as a 20% increase in the renewable energy penetration in the total energy production. The electrification of transport offers a good opportunity to decrease CO2 emissions and increase the national energy security. Electric vehicles (EVs) are a mobile source of electricity demand, charging for relatively long periods of time and as a result of this, EVs could place significant coincident demand on the system. This increase in the system's peak demand may cause transformer and cables overloading and violation of the voltage limits. The main aims of this research was to evaluate the impact of Electric Vehicles on a real Italian distribution network, located in the north Italy, considering different levels of EVs penetration, initial battery state of charge and EVs charging scenarios.