A Charging Strategy for PV-Based Battery Switch Stations Considering Service Availability and Self-Consumption of PV Energy

The photovoltaic (PV)-based battery switch station (BSS) is one of typical integration systems to implement a solar-to-vehicle system. The charging strategy is important for the operation of the PV-based BSS. Generally, instant charging strategy for swapped electric vehicle (EV) batteries can keep the availability of battery-swapping service at a high level. However, it is always accompanied with the possibility of bringing a negative effect on the utilization of PV energy. The contribution of this paper is mainly on a novel charging strategy for the PV-based BSS considering the service availability and self-consumption of the PV energy. First, considering the features of the PV-based BSS, evaluation indexes for the operation performance are defined, including the availability of battery-swapping service, self-consumption of the PV energy, and operation profit. Second, the charging strategy is proposed, including a battery-swapping service model and a power distribution model. In order to guarantee the service availability, the battery-swapping service model is used to decide the lower limit of charging power based on short-term forecasting results of EV requirements. The power distribution model is obliged to dispatch the charging power supplied by the PV system and power grid. Finally, in the case study, the operation of the BSS is simulated with the instant charging strategy and the proposed strategy under different scenarios. From the analysis of results, the proposed strategy can effectively improve the self-consumption of PV energy with the premise of guaranteeing the availability of the battery-swapping service.