Optimized Energy Management of Electric Drive Vehicles in a Green Residential Building

During the extremely-hot weather or transient heat waves, air conditioners are the main contributors to highest peak electricity demand which may lead to the widespread blackouts or brownouts. Meanwhile, electric drive vehicles are rapidly gaining popularity due to the global warming and energy crisis. Hence, this paper schedules on optimal charge and discharge decisions of plug-in electric vehicles (PEV) in a residential cooling and power microgrid that is driven by a solar Stirling engine. In the presented microgrid, the solar dish Stirling heat engine is employed as an external combustion engine to supply the electricity requirement of compressor, evaporator and condenser fans and charge the PEVs in the off-peak cooling-load hours. During the on-peak periods, optimal discharge of PEVs increases total energy and emission savings, significantly. A thermodynamic based mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem is solved to minimize total electricity cost for a benchmark residential building located in a tropical region taking into account the operational constraints of the Stirling engine and the refrigeration cycle. Simulation results demonstrate that this micro-cogeneration system can be introduced as a near-zero energy building with zero-carbon footprint in the presence of PEVs.