Optimal Sizing and Energy Management of Microgrids with Vehicle-to-Grid Technology: A Critical Review and Future Trends

The topic of microgrids (MGs) is a fast-growing and very promising field of research in terms of energy production quality, pollution reduction and sustainable development. Moreover, MGs are, above all, designed to considerably improve the autonomy, sustainability, and reliability of future electrical distribution grid. At the same time, aspects of MGs energy management, taking into consideration distribution generation systems, energy storage devices, electric vehicles, and consumption components have been widely investigated. Besides, grid architectures including DC, AC, or hybrid power generation systems, energy dispatching problems modelling, operating modes (islanded or grid connected), MGs sizing, simulations and problems solving optimization approaches, and other aspects, have been raised as topics of great interest for both electrical and computer sciences research communities. Furthermore, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and government policies and incentives have paved the way to massive electric vehicle (EV) deployment. Hence, several research studies have been conducted to investigate the integration of EVs in national power grid and future MGs. Specifically, EV charging stations’ bi-directional power flow control and energy management have been considerably explored. These issues index challenging research topics, which are in most cases still under progress. This paper gives an overview of MGs technology advancement in recent decades, taking into consideration distributed energy generation (DER), energy storage systems (ESS), EVs, and loads. It reviews the main MGs architecture, operating modes, sizing and energy management systems (EMS) and EVs integration.