This paper presents an optimised bidirectional Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) operation, based on a fleet of Electric Vehicles (EVs) connected to a distributed power system, through a network of charging stations. The system is able to perform day-ahead scheduling of EV charging/discharging to reduce EV ownership charging cost through participating in frequency and voltage regulation services. The proposed system is able to respond to real-time EV usage data and identify the required changes that must be made to the day-ahead energy prediction, further optimising the use of EVs to support both voltage and frequency regulation. An optimisation strategy is established for V2G scheduling, addressing the initial battery State Of Charge (SOC), EV plug-in time, regulation prices, desired EV departure time, battery degradation cost and vehicle charging requirements. The effectiveness of the proposed system is demonstrated using a standardized IEEE 33-node distribution network integrating five EV charging stations. Two case studies have been undertaken to verify the contribution of this advanced energy supervision approach. Comprehensive simulation results clearly show an opportunity to provide frequency and voltage support while concurrently reducing EV charging costs, through the integration of V2G technology, especially during on-peak periods when the need for active and reactive power is high.

Abstract-In this paper, a novel three-phase parallel grid connected multilevel inverter (MLI) topology with a novel switching strategy are proposed. This Inverter is intended to feed a microgrid from renewable energy sources (RES) to overcome the problem of the polluted sinusoidal output in classical inverters and to reduce component count, particularly for generating a multilevel waveform with a large number of levels. The proposed power converter consists of n two-level (n + 1) phase inverters connected in parallel, where n is the number of RES. The more the number RES, the more the number of voltage levels, the more faithful is the output sinusoidal wave form. In the proposed topology, both voltage pulse width and height are modulated and pre-calculated by using a pulse width and height modulation (PWHM) so as to reduce the number of switching states (i.e. switching losses) and the total harmonic distortion (THD). The topology is investigated through simulations and validated experimentally with a laboratory prototype. Compliance with the IEEE 519-1992 and IEC 61000-3-12 standards is presented and an exhaustive comparison of the proposed topology is made against the classical cascaded H-bridge topology.