Literature review: Potential impacts of plug-in electric vehicles on electric power systems

The air in most large Latin American cities is polluted, primarily because their automotive fleet is composed of internal-combustion engine vehicles. This also implies a strong fossil-fuel dependency. Petroleum fuels are nonrenewable and, as a consequence, the current mobility model becomes unsustainable. Great expectations have been put in electric vehicles. Such vehicles are already penetrating the automotive market and, soon, will be part of the alternatives of mobility in countries of Latin America. Therefore, research and development efforts must be conducted in order to facilitate the transition between the old technology, of internal-combustion engine vehicles, to the new e-mobility technology, in an efficient and effective way. At the Instituto de Energía Eléctrica, a three-year research project has begun. The scope of the project includes the analysis of potential impacts of massive penetration of electric vehicles on both: the power system and the way in which it is traditionally operated. In this paper, a partial result of the natural first step in a scientific research is presented, that is a literature/bibliographic review. The paper focuses on three main issues: the impacts on the network planning, on the power quality and on the tariff schemes. After a brief introduction and a quantitative analysis of the available literature on the subject, each one of the issues is separately presented. Finally, the conclusions of the paper are given.