Abstract:

The widespread of electric mobility is imposing the application of new hardware and software technologies for supporting new operation paradigms, not only in improving smart grids but also each time more in the perspective of boosting the preponderance of smart homes. Concretely, nowadays, it is clear that the emergent technologies for smart homes, targeting power quality and more efficient power management, are also altering the conventional electrical power grids toward smart grids. This paper's main goal is to characterize the electric vehicle (EV) role in smart homes, present a broad assessment based on state of the art, and create a link with upcoming advanced operations in this context by connecting the strategic pillars of electric mobility smart homes. From the smart home point of view, since it should be equipped to deal with the requirements of the EV, the assessment of both onboard and off-board EV battery charging systems are considered along with the paper. Furthermore, the presence of technologies such as energy storage systems, renewable energy sources, and dc electrical appliances in smart homes towards sustainability is also reflected in this paper, but framed from the point of view of an off-board EV battery charging system, since it is more convenient for enabling the interface of these mentioned technologies. Looking at the study as a whole, the consideration of future EV operations in smart homes, as well as the possibility of ac, dc, or hybrid power grids, is a valuable contribution. Illustrative and strategic results are shown, covering all these features with specific details based on numerical simulations and experimental results, which were obtained with a proof-of-concept laboratory prototype. The achieved results are based on three different situations (a conventional ac smart home with independent power converters, a hybrid ac and dc smart home, a dc smart home), focusing on the analysis in terms of energy efficiency.