This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been

fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TSTE.2016.2613941, IEEE
Transactions on Sustainable Energy

Operational Planning of Electric Vehicles for

Balancing Wind Power and Load Fluctuations in
a Microgrid
Hongming Yang, Member, IEEE, Hao Pan, Fengji Luo, Member, IEEE, Jing Qiu, Member, IEEE, Pengxing Zhang,
Mingyong Lai, and Zhao Yang Dong, Senior Member, IEEE

 t dis Time interval for operational dispatch (h);

Abstract—The intermittency of renewable energy poses chal- N Number of nodes except depot node;
lenges on the reliable and economical operations of microgrids.
This paper considers a grid-connected microgrid model which  d , n,t Standard deviation of forecasting error of the
consists of a logistics distribution system, where electric vehicles local load at node n at time t (MW);
(EVs) depart from the depot, deliver the goods to multiple de- Monte-Carlo simulation (MCS) output varia-
X
mand loads, and then return to the depot. Based on this, this pa- bles;
per studies the coordinated dispatch strategies of EVs to smooth  (X ) MCS output variable’s standard variation(MW);
renewable energy and load fluctuations of the microgrid while
ensuring the quality of logistics services. A microgrid operation E( X ) MCS output variable’s expected value (MW);
model is proposed to optimize the driving routes, fast-charging vn , t Wind speed at node n at time t (m/s);
time and regular-charging/discharging strategies of EVs. Specifi-
cally the objective is to minimize the overall operation cost of the hn, t , cn,t Shape and scalar parameters at node n at time
microgrid while satisfying the requirements of the logistics distri- t , respectively;
bution tasks. A self-adaptively imperialist competitive algorithm Rn Turbine rotor radius at node n (m);
(SaICA) is proposed to solve the model. The simulation results
demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model. n,t Air density at node n at time t (kg/m3);
Downstream wind speeds at node n at time t
vndo,t
Index Terms—Electric vehicle, microgrid operation, logistics (m/s);
distribution, self-adaptively imperialist competitive algorithm, Rated power output of the wind turbine at node
wind power Pn,rats
n (MW);
vn,in , vn, out Cut-in and cut-out wind speed of the wind tur-
NOMENCLATURE bine at node n , respectively (m/s);
Sets Rated wind speed of the wind turbine at node n
vn, rats
Z, f Set of customers and charging stations; (m/s);
Fw Set of virtual nodes of the w th charging station; Pwind , n, t , Pd ,n,t Forecasted wind power and local load power at
node n at time t , respectively (MW);
F Set of virtual nodes of all W charging stations;
Forecast error of local load power and wind
I Set of all nodes in logistics distribution;  d ,n,t , wind ,n,t power at node n at time t , respectively
F , F Set of visited and unvisited charging stations; (MW);
Microgrid System Parameters Pinput , t Actual tie-line power at time t (MW);
T Number of time intervals;
Pmax, , Pmax, Maximum tie-line capacity in negative and posi-
tive direction (MW);
This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Founda- Pl Flow limits of line l (MW);
tion of China (Key program 71331001, 71420107027; Major research program
91547113); and in part by the Visiting Scholarship of State Key Laboratory of  l,n Sensitivity coefficient of power injection at
Power Transmission Equipment & System Security and New Technology, node n to line power flow on l ;
Chongqing University, China (2007DA10512716401). Logistics Distribution Parameters
H. Yang, H. Pan, P. Zhang, M. Lai and Z. Y. Dong are with the Hunan pro- Number of customers;
M
vincial Engineering Research Center of Electric Transportation and Smart
Distribution Network, the Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Smart Grids z0 Depot node;
Operation and Control, School of Electrical and Information Engineering, zm The m th customer;
Changsha University of Science and Technology, Changsha, 410114, China
(e-mails: yhm5218@hotmail.com, panhao115@163.com); W Number of the charging stations;
F. Luo is with the School of Civil Engineering, the University of Sydney, fw The w th charging stations;
NSW Australia (e-mail: fengji.luo@sydney.edu.au);
J. Qiu is with the Center of Intelligent Electricity Networks (CIEN), The S Total times of fast-charging services a charging
University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW 2308, Australia (e-mail: station can provide (times);
qiujing0322@ gmail.com); The s th virtual node of the w th charging sta-
Z. Y. Dong is with the School of Electrical and Information Engineering, f w, s
The University of Sydney, NSW, Australia (e-mail: zydong@ieee.org). tion;

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TSTE.2016.2613941, IEEE
Transactions on Sustainable Energy

Distance of route between nodes i and j  Day-ahead electricity wholesale price and im-
d ij input , t ,  imba
(km); balance electricity price at time t ($/MWh);
t start , k , t end ,k The k th EV’s starting time and ending time in Variables
the process of distribution (h); Decision of the k th EV directly travel from
The earliest and latest distribution time of the xij , k nodes i to j , in which 0 denotes not travel, 1
ai , bi
i th customer (h); denotes travel ( i, j  I  Z  F  {z0 } );
ti , k Arrival time of the kth EV on i th customer； Decision of the k th EV servicing customer
Electric Vehicle Parameters yi , k delivery at node i : 0 denotes not service; 1
K Number of the EVs; denotes service;
Pfast Fast charging power (kW); Pcon,t Bid power at time t (MW);
Bk Cost of battery per kWh for the k th EV ($); t fast , i , k Fast charging time of the k th EV at charging
station i (h);
Yk Drive depreciation cost of the k th EV($);
Pdch, k , t , Pch, k ,t Regular discharging and charging power of the
mik Driving miles of the k th EV(km); k th EV at time t , respectively (kW).
mik , max Maximum driving miles of the k th EV(km);
TBk I. INTRODUCTION
Investment cost of the k th EV ($);
Ek
BL
Battery capacity of the k th EV (kW);
Labor cost for battery replacement ($);
A S a promising solution to the energy crisis and the global
warming problem, renewable energy has been experienc-
ing rapid development over the last few years [1]. By integrat-
Ecd ,k Total fast-charging energy by k th EV (kWh); ing the distributed renewable energy sources (RESs) and other
Maximum life cycle of the k th EV battery resources such as interruptible loads, energy storage system
Yk ,max (ESS), the conception of microgrid was proposed as an effec-
(times);
tive way to integrate renewable energy into the grid [2]. Mi-
Qk , max , Qk , min The k th EV’s battery maximum and minimum crogrid can either participate in the upper level grid operation
rated capacity, respectively (kWh);
The k th EV’s charging and discharging effi- as controllable load, or deliver power to local loads as a con-
 ch, k ,  dch, k trollable generation source.
ciency, respectively;
The k th EV’s maximum charging and dis- Due to renewable energy’s intermittency and high fluctua-
Pchmax max
,k Pdch ,k tion nature, high penetration of RESs will pose significant
charging power, respectively (kW);
vcar , k challenges on the grid [3], [4], such as voltage instability, line
The k th EV’s velocity (km/h);
power overload, etc. In recent years, ESS has been studied by
S k ,max , S k , min The k th EV’s maximum and minimum state- some researchers to smooth power fluctuations in the tie line of
of-charge (SOC), respectively; the microgrid and the upper level distribution system. For in-
Sinit , k The k th EV’s initial SOC; stance, a grid-connected wind power station incorporated with
S k ,t The k th EV battery SOC at time t at the de- two battery energy storage systems (BESS) is considered, and
pot; the charge and discharge schemes for the two BESS are pro-
SaICA Parameters posed to smooth the wind power fluctuations [5]. In [6], a real-
u Moving units of colony; time microgrid management approach is proposed to determine
h Positions of the h th colony and imperialist of the charge/discharge to/from the ESS over time. In this ap-
col w , im w
the w th empire, respectively; proach, the total time-varying energy cost of the main grid is
 Weight value minimized. Also, the renewable energy that is offset by load
g Generation index; over time can be predicted. The above works use the local
G Maximum generation number; ESSs to mitigate the power fluctuations of the tie line, based
Random angle of the colony search the space on the assumption that the microgrid is unconditionally willing
 (g )
around the imperialist at the g th generation; to do it. In that case, the impacts of the market incentive or
Control parameter that adjusts the deviation punishment are ignored. Moreover, the market instruments are
 (g ) from the original movement direction at the investigated to smooth the tie-line power fluctuations of the
g th generation; grid-connected microgrid. When a microgrid optimally offers
Cost Parameters its variable power to a competitive electricity market, if the
 fast ,t ,  reg ,t Fast and regular charging price at time t actual tie-line power deviates from the scheduled power, a
($/kWh); penalty will apply. In [7], the imbalance prices are employed
 Profit factor of the fast charging station; for the deviated power between the actual power output and
Total cost and day-ahead energy purchase cost day-ahead bidding power of the microgrid, so as to encourage
 , 1
of the microgrid ($); the microgrid to actively improve the forecast accuracy and
 2 , 3 Imbalance cost and fast charging cost ($); reduce the renewable power fluctuations. In [8], a minimiza-
4 tion model of imbalance costs is developed to obtain the opti-
Total degradation cost of the EV ($);
mal wind power production bids for a short-term power market.

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Transactions on Sustainable Energy
However, in the market environment, one limitation of the
approach that the ESS is likely to increase the microgrid opera-
tion costs, because of the high investment cost of the ESS at
this stage.
The penetrations of electric vehicles (EVs) have significant
impacts on the microgrid operations. On the one hand, the in-
creasing levels of uncoordinated EVs charging can lead to
higher peak loads and power losses, deteriorate power quality,
and cause imbalances between generation and consumption,
voltage deviation and harmonics, etc. [9]. On the other hand,
by using the vehicle to grid (V2G) technology, power output
fluctuations of the microgrid could also be smoothed by con-
trolling the charging/discharging power of EVs. A minimum
cost approach has been investigated by some literature. The
possibility of smoothing load variance in a household mi-
crogrid through regulating the charging patterns of family EVs
is investigated in [10]. In [11], a stochastic simulation method
is used to study the probabilistic distribution of the charg-
ing/discharging power of EVs, and then a stochastic
economical operation model for the microgrid is proposed to
achieve the minimal cost and emission. In [12], a coordinated
scheduling model is proposed for EVs, wind power, and solar
power, aiming to minimize the daily power fluctuations of
RESs. Those above works are undertaken based on the as-
sumption that EVs’ travel time and battery remaining capacity
are given. The impact of EVs’ driving requirement on the trav-
el time and the battery remaining capacity has been ignored. In
addition, the coordination of driving requirement and charg-
ing/discharging is not considered in those models.
Logistics distribution is an important activity of a country’s
national economic development [13]. In the developing coun-
tries, the logistics distribution uses 44% of the fuels and gener-
ates 26% of total CO2 emissions of the whole transportation
industry [14], [15]. The logistics distribution problem can be
modelled as a vehicle routing problem (VRP) [16], where the
operation objective is optimized (e.g., find the shortest distri-
bution routes or minimize the distribution costs) while satisfy-
ing the distribution requirements. With the advantage of little
emission, EV has been considered as a kind of promising vehi-
cles for the logistics distribution purpose. In [17], an EV navi-
gation strategy is designed to minimize the energy consump-
tion of EVs. In [18], the authors proposed an EV route optimi-
zation model by considering the fast/regular charging patterns
and the impacts of the time-of-use pricing signals. However,
the existing works have not considered the impacts of the EVs
on microgrid operation.
In order to further investigate a set of EVs’ driving behav-
iors in a logistics distribution system and charging/discharging
strategies in a grid-connected microgrid, this paper proposes an
operational planning approach. The proposed model simulta-
neously optimizes the bid power of the microgrid and the driv-
ing routes and charging/discharging decisions of the EVs, in
order to minimize the power fluctuations of the microgrid.
Comparing with the existing works [18], in this study we con-
sider EVs as logistics distribution vehicles participating in the
microgrid operation. We optimize the charging strategies of
multiple EVs instead of only one EV in [18]. Also in [18], we
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only consider the EV as energy consumer, while in this work
we not only consider the EV as both energy consumer (charg-
ing) and producer (discharging). Moreover, a self-adaptive
imperialist competitive algorithm (SaICA) algorithm is pro-
posed to effectively solve the proposed model.
II. MICROGRID SYSTEM WITH EVS AND RES
The microgrid system studied in this paper consists of wind
power sources, loads, and EVs with V2G functions. EVs are
assumed to be used for the logistics distribution. Certainly,
EVs for other purposes can be also utilized to provide V2G
functions (e.g., household EVs). The diagram of the microgrid
system is shown in Fig. 1.
Pinput 
Pinput 
Fig. 1. Diagram of the microgrid
A. Description of the Microgrid
In the day-ahead electricity market, the microgrid simulta-
neously optimizes the bid capacities based on the forecasted
load and wind power profiles, and submits bids to the inde-
pendent system operator (ISO) 24-hour in advance. After re-
ceived the bids, the ISO matches the submitted bids and de-
termines the tie-line power instructions and the market clear-
ance prices. Based on the instructions of the ISO, the microgrid
determines the day-ahead energy purchase cost [7], [19], [20].
When the EVs park in different parking areas, such as the
logistics distribution depot, public/household parking lots, etc.,
they can be charged/discharged to participate in the microgrid
grid operation. In our application, the EVs are controlled to
minimize the deviations between the bids and actual outputs,
which are caused by the wind power fluctuations and load var-
iations. When the actual tie-line power exceeds the bid, the
EVs are charged; otherwise, the EVs are discharged.
B. Preliminaries and Assumptions
(a) A common day-ahead pool trading structure is adopted,
which permits participants to offer and schedule energy trans-
actions for the following day [7]. The bidding prices of the
microgrid are the lowest prices in the wholesale market. This
assumption ensures that the bid power of the microgrid can be
fully dispatched by the ISO.
(b) For those market participants who deviate from their
scheduled transactions on the ex-ante market, the ISO employs
an ex-post settlement mechanism to issue the imbalance prices
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for upward and downward deviations from the participant’s
offered schedule [7]. The deviations between the bid power
and the actual power output of the microgrid will be settled by
the imbalance prices.
(c) The EVs are assumed to be used for the logistics distri-
bution purpose. In the distribution process, when the energy of
EV is inadequate, it chooses the nearest charging station to do
the fast charging. After accomplishing the logistics distribution
tasks, the EVs will return to the depot, where they can be
plugged into the charging poles and regular charged/discharged.
(d) The charging power of the EV can be continuously
controlled. This can be achieved by using the inverter [21].
Also in this study, since the fast charging stations do not be-
long to the microgrid system, we only optimally control the
charging/discharging power of the regular charging poles and
set the charging power of fast charging stations to be constant
values.
(e) In the logistics distribution, multiple vehicles load the
goods of customers at depot, depart from the depot to deliver
the goods to customers, and return to the depot after accom-
plish the distribution tasks. In order to avoid the unnecessary
route and reduce the distribution cost, in a logistics distribution
tasks, each customer node is only served by one vehicle.
Therefore, we assume each customer node only is accessed
once. Since in the distribution process, a charging station could
be accessed by multiple EVs, we introduce the conception of
‘virtual charging station’ to mark each possible access for a
charging station.
(f) In terms of fast charging and regular charging, the time-
of-use (TOU) electricity price is considered. Since the fast-
charging station needs to make profits, the fast-charging elec-
tricity price is higher than the regular-charging price. The rela-
tionship between the fast-charging and regular-charging prices
is,
 fast , t     reg ,t . (1)
C. Microgrid Element Modelling
1) Load Forecasting Error Model
The forecasting error of the local load of the microgrid  t ,D
is often assumed to follow the normal distribution:
 d , n , t ~ N (  d , n , t ,  d2, n , t ) .
2) Wind Power Generation Model
Many statistical studies have shown that the probability dis-
tribution of the wind speed follows the Weibull distribution
[22], represented as,
h v h 1  ( c )
f ( vn ,t )  n ,t ( n ,t ) n ,t e n ,t
cn ,t cn ,t
Wind power is converted from kinetic energy by wind turbine
and the output strongly depends on the wind speed, i.e.
 0
 v ndo,t v ndo,t 2
 (1  )[1  (
 1 v n,t v n ,t
Pwind , n ,t   R n2 n ,t v n3,t
2 2 in the logistics depot or parking lots, and the bid power of the
 P n , rats


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Transactions on Sustainable Energy
The wind turbine will be started when the wind speed reaches
vn,in and will be stopped under vn, out . The wind power fore-
cast error  wind ,n,t is given by the difference between the ac-
tual output and forecasted output [23].
3) Logistics Distribution Model
z0 represents the depot, the set of the customers is repre-
sented as Z  {z1 ,, zM } , and the set of the charging stations
is represented as f  { f1 ,, fW } . Assuming the charging
station f w can be accessed s times, then the set of virtual
nodes is denoted as Fw  { f w,1 ,, f w,s } . The set of the virtual
nodes of all the W charging stations is denoted as
F  {F1 ,, FW } . The set of all the nodes of the logistics dis-
tribution system consists of the set of customer nodes Z , the
set of the virtual nodes of all the charging stations F , and the
set of depot node {z0 } . The set of all the nodes can therefore
be presented as I  Z  F  {z0 } .
In the logistics distribution optimization problem, some
charging nodes may never be visited. For the simplicity and
clarification of the modeling expression, the virtual nodes of
charging station are divided into two sets: 1) the first set F
represents the nodes which will be visited; and 2) the second
set F represents the nodes which will never be visited. The
first set can be represented as,
def
F  {i | xij , k  1, i  F , j  Z , k  1,, K } , (5)
where F is the subset of the EV’s all the possible routes
xij, k  . When xij , k  1 , i  F , j  Z , k  1,  , K ， that indi-
cates the EV drives from the charging station node to the cus-
tomer node. F is the set of nodes except for the nodes in
F , i.e.
F  F \ F . (6)
III. EVS’ OPERATIONAL PLANNING MODEL FOR BALANCING
RENEWABLE AND LOAD FLUCTUATIONS
In this study, since the EVs for logistics distribution pur-
(2) pose involve the control of multiple EVs to serve multiple cus-
tomers, the operational constraints of the logistics distribution
EVs are more complicated than those of household EVs.
Therefore, we mainly consider the modelling of operational
constraints of multiple EVs in the logistics distribution system.
v n ,t hn ,t We coordinately optimize the charging/discharging behaviors
of multiple logistics distribution EVs, with the objective to
. (3)
smooth the renewable fluctuations in the microgrid, which
subsequentially minimize the total operation costs of microgrid.
In the proposed operational planning model, the decision vari-
v n ,t  v n ,in , v n ,t  v n ,out ables of the microgrid with EVs and RES are the starting time
and driving routes of the EVs, the fast charging time duration
) ]
. (4) of the EVs, the regular charging/discharging power of the EVs
v n ,in  v n ,t  v n , rats
v n , rats  v n ,t  v n , out microgrid.
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Transactions on Sustainable Energy

A. Objective Function N K

The objective function of the proposed model can be math-

Pinput ,t   (Pwind ,n,t   wind ,n,t )   (Pdch,k ,t  Pch,k ,t )  10 3
n 1 k 1
ematically formulated as, N
min   1   2   3   4 . (7)   ( Pd ,n,t   d , n,t ) t  1,2,, T  . (15)
There are totally four cost items in the model. The first item is n 1
the day-ahead energy purchase cost of the microgrid, And the tie-line power and DC flow constraints,
T Pmax,  Pinput ,t  Pmax, t  1,2,  , T  . (16)
1   input ,t Pcon,t tdis . (8)
 3 
K
t 1 N

 Pwind ,n ,t  wind ,n ,t  ( Pdch, k ,t  Pch ,k ,t )  10 
The second item represents the imbalance costs due to the 
 Pl   l ,n  k 1   Pl
power deviations between the actual microgrid power output n 1  P 
 d , n ,t   d , n ,t 
and the bid power. In this paper, we consider the actual output
of the microgrid as a stochastic variable. Therefore, the ex- (t  1,2, , T ) . (17)
pected power deviations are calculated, as shown in Eq. (9). 2) Battery Capacity Constraints
T In the regular charging/discharging process, the remaining
 2    imba  E ( Pinput ,t  Pcon ,t )  tdis , (9) capacity of EV battery is constrained as,
t 1
0  Pch , k , t  Pchmax max
, k ,0  Pdch , k , t  Pdch , k t  [1, t start , k ]  [tend , k , T ]
where E () represents the expected value calculation. Alt- 
 Pch , k , t  0, Pdch , k , t  0 t  [t start , k , tend , k ]
hough the imbalance penalization is explained with an example
of the market mechanism in [7], with some minor adjustments, k  1,, K  . (18)
it can be applied in other markets as well. Constraint (18) shows that when the EVs are regularly
The third item represents the fast charging cost of multiple charged/discharged, the charging/discharging power cannot
EVs, exceed their maximum power limits, and the regular charg-
T K ing/discharging power is zero when the EVs perform the dis-
3     fast,t Pfast t fast,i,k . (10) tribution task.
t 1 k 1 iF Constraint (19) ensures that an EV cannot be charged and
As mentioned before, the value of Pfast is assumed to be con- discharged at the same time at any dispatch time interval.
stant and t fast , i , k is the decision variable. The larger the Pch , k , t  Pdch , k , t  max( Pch , k , t , Pdch , k , t ) t  [1, t start , k ]  [tend , k , T ]

value of t fast , i , k , the higher the fast charging cost. (19) k  1,, K  .
In the dispatch process, the SOC of the EV battery should
The fourth item is the total degradation cost of the EVs. The satisfy,
regular charge of EV is with low voltage and small current,
Sk , min  Sk ,t  Sk , max t  [1, tstart , k ]  [tend ,k , T ]
and has little impact on the battery life time of EVs compared
with the fast charge [24]. Therefore, in this study we only con- (20) k  1,, K  .
sider the EV battery depreciation caused by the fast charge. Constraint (21) states that at the end of a dispatch period, the
The depreciation cost of EVs can be calculated as, SOC of the EV needs to achieve its initial value, in order to be
K ready for a next dispatch period.
4   ( Bk Ek  BL )  Ecd ,k /(Yk ,max Ek )  Yk , (11)  Pdch ,k ,t 1t dis  ch ,k Pch ,k ,t 1t dis
k 1  S k ,t 1  S k ,t    t  [1, t start ,k ]  [t end ,k , T ]
 dch ,k Q k ,max Qk ,max
where the total fast-charging energy Ecd ,k is calculated as,  Pdch ,k ,t 1t dis  ch ,k Pch ,k ,t 1t dis
 S k ,t 1  S k ,init   t 1
T   dch ,k Qk ,max Qk ,max
Ecd ,k   Pfast t fast,i,k . (12) 

S k ,t 1  S k ,init
Qi ,k
t T
t 1  S k ,t  i  z 0 , t  t end ,k
The drive depreciation cost of the EV is related to the drive  Qk ,max

miles, and can be calculated as, k  1,, K  . (21)
mik Moreover, in the logistics distribution process, the remain-
Yk   (TBk  Bk ) , (13)
mik ,max ing capacity of EV battery is subjected to following constraint,
where the drive miles of k th EV can be calculated as, Qk , min  Qi ,k  Qk , max k  1,, K , (22)
mik   d ij xij ,k . (14) where the remaining capacity of EV battery is related to the
iI jI EV drive miles, charging time, and loadings, and can be calcu-
lated as [18].
B. Constraints 3) Driving Constraints
1) Microgrid Operational Constraints The ending time of the drive, tend ,k , can be calculated as,
The power and demand balance should satisfy the following
1
constraints, tend , k  t start , k   t fast ,i, k  vcar, k  dij xij , k
i F i I j  I

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Transactions on Sustainable Energy
1 vidual with minimum fitness value is called the imperialist and
  tun,i  yi ,k k  1,, K  .
60 iZ
In previous work [18], the starting time of the EV is fixed and
pre-specified. Here, the EV’s starting time is treated as a deci-
sion variable to optimize. In the simulation, we study the im-
pacts of different EV starting time on the microgrid operation
in details.
For the k th EV, it must accomplish the distribution task of
the i th customer within the specified time, that is,
ai  ti , k  bi . (24)
To ensure the feasibility of the logistics distribution process
with multiple EVs, the driving route constraints need to be
considered under the assumption (e), i.e.
 xz0 j,k  1 k  1,, K , (25)
jI
K the original movement direction. More details of ICA can be
 xij ,k  1 i  Z ,
jI k 1
 xij ,k   x ji,k  0 i  I , k  1, , K .
jI jI
Constraint (25) ensures that each EV can only depart once;
Constraint (26) ensures that each customer can only be served
by one EV at one time; Constraint (27) ensures that for each
node, the number of the incoming EVs must be the same with
that of the outgoing EVs. We also consider the EV loading
level constraints, that is, for each EV, its loading level at an
arbitrary node cannot exceed its maximum loading limit. The
formulation details of the EV loading level constraints can be
referred as our previous work [18].
For EVs with other purposes (e.g., household EVs), the
proposed method can still be applied by modifying constraints
(24)-(27) based on the driving route requirements of the EVs.
IV. SOLUTION ALGORITHM
From Section III, it can be seen that the proposed microgrid
operational planning model is a mixed-integer, nonlinear opti-
mization problem. The optimization problem is solved on the
day before with 24-hour time horizon. The complexity of the
proposed model makes the mathematical programming ap-
proaches often fail to find the optimal solution. In this paper,
we employ the imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA) to
solve the model.
A. Introduction of Standard Imperialist Competitive Algorithm
SaICA is based on the standard imperialist competitive al-
gorithm (ICA). ICA is firstly proposed by Atashpaz-Gargari
and Lucas in 2007 [25]. In recent years, ICA has been applied
to solve various power engineering problems, such as the eco-
nomical dispatch and load control [26], [27]. ICA mimics
competition among the imperialists. Each imperialist possesses
some colonies to form an empire, and tries to expand its power
by possessing the colonies of other empires. During the com-
petition, weak empires collapse and powerful ones take posses-
sion of their colonies. Correspondingly, in ICA the whole pol-
lution of individuals are also distributed into multiple groups,
and each groups is called an empire. For each group, the indi-
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(23)
others are called colonies. In each generation, each colony
moves towards its imperialist, and generates the mutant based
on following rules, which are core search heuristics of ICA:
(a) Each colony moves toward the relevant imperialist by
u units.
u    (Im w  col wh ) , (28)
where  is usually set as a uniform random number within
(0, 2), so as to make the colony move towards the imperialist
in both sides.
(b) To encourage the colony to search the space around the
imperialist, a random angle  is added as the deviation.
 follows U (  ,  ) . (29)
where U () denotes the uniform distribution function. By
using the control parameter  , the deviation is adjusted from
(26) found in [25].
B. Self-Adaptive ICA
(27)
In the standard ICA, the deviation factor  controls the
global searching behavior of the colonies. A larger value of 
facilitates the global exploration, while a smaller value will
increase the impact of local exploitation. In standard ICA, 
is a uniformly random number within its bounds   ,   .
A good evolutionary algorithm has following properties: it
should have strong global search ability in early generations to
encourage exploration, and has strong local search ability in
later generations to speed up the convergence. For ICA, with
the evolution process, the number of imperialists is gradually
reduced to 1. Therefore, in later generations, the colonies
should be more encouraged to exploit the areas around the im-
perialists rather than do the chaotic search in the problem space,
so as to speed up the convergence. Based on this, this paper
proposes a self-adaptive ICA, which employs a linear
weighting decreasing strategy to self-adaptively adjust the
bounds of  with the evolution process. The proposed SaICA,
in each generation the new bounds of deviation factor  is
calculated as:
 ( g )   ( g  1)  g  2 ( g  1) / G . (30)
Then, the value of  at generation g is randomly generated
as:
 ( g ) follows U (  ( g ),  ( g )) . (31)
C. SaICA Based Microgrid Operational Planning Optimiza-
tion Solution
The schematic of using the SaICA to solve the microgrid
operational planning model can be depicted as Fig. 2, and the
detailed procedures are presented as below.
1) Empire Initiation
SaICA maintains a population of individuals, where each
one is called a country. Each country represents a solution for a
given problem. In the beginning of SaICA, some countries are
selected as imperialists, and other countries act as the colonies
and are assigned to the N imp imperialists in proportion to the
fitness values of the imperialists.
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Transactions on Sustainable Energy

In this paper, the decision variables includes four parts: the
bid power of the microgrid, the starting time and driving routes
of the EVs, the fast charging time duration of the EVs and the
regular charging/discharging power of the EVs in the logistics
depot. The EV driving routes are encoded as integer variables,
and the other decision variables are encoded as the real varia-
bles.
Fig. 2. SaICA based microgrid operational planning solution
Firstly, the routes without charging station nodes are encod-
ed, and then the virtual charging station nodes are randomly
inserted into the sub-paths. Fig. 3 shows the encoding scheme
for a system consisting 3 EVs, 9 customers, and 2 charging
rounding operations are performed on the new colony. The
driving route constraints are considered in Fig. 4(a). After the
colony movement process, the new value of  is self-
adaptively updated by Eqs. (30) and (31).
3) Position Update of Imperialist and Colony
If a colony reaches a position with lower cost than the impe-
rialist, the colony and imperialist will exchange positions. The
rest colonies of this empire will move towards the new position.
Taking the bid power (a decision variable) for example, Fig.
4(b) illustrates the exchange process between imperialist and
colony. Both the bid power and actual tie-lie power will affect
the imbalance cost, and consequentially affect the fitness of the
colony. The variation of colonies is mainly determined by the
evolution rules of the algorithm, and the colony with lowest
fitness value will finally be selected as the new imperialist.
4) Imperialist Competition
In each generation, all empires compete with each other to
take possession of the colonies of other empires. The competi-
tion is based on the power of empires. The power of the empire
is calculated based on the fitness values of all the colonies.
Colony Imperialist
0 1 f1,1 2 3 0 4 5 f1,2 6 7 0 8 f 2,1 9 0 0 2 f1,1 3 6 0 1 4 f 2,1 8 7 0 5 f1, 2 9 0
Delete virtual charging station
and distribution center

stations, where 0 represents the depot, numbers 1-9 represent 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 2 3 6 1 4 8 7 5 9


the customers, and f1,1 represent the first charging behavior  
 0 .3
of the first charging station. 1 1 3 -3 -1 2 0 -3 0
Turn into integer
Besides the decision variable of the driving routes, other de- 1.3 2.3 3.9 3.1 4.7 6.6 7 7.1 9 1 2 4 3 5 7 7 7 9
cision variables are real parameters, including the bid power of Add virtual charging station
New colony Adjust
the microgrid at each time interval, the fast charging time dura- f
2 4 0 3 5 f1, 2 7 6 0 8 2,1 9 0
and depot nodes
1 2 4 3 5 7 6 8 9
0 1 f1,1
tions of the charging stations, the regular charging/discharging
power of the EV in the logistics depot (positive value—charge; (a) Process of colony moving towards imperialist about EV Route

negative value—discharge).
Colony Imperialist
Bid power 1 Bid power 2

+ Actual tie line power

- +
f1,1 f 2,1 f1, 2
-
Imbalance power Imbalance price Imbalance power
× ×
f1,1 f 2,1 f 1, 2
Imbalance Cost 1 Imbalance Cost 2

Fig. 3. Encoding scheme demonstration

Imbalance Cost 1≥Imbalance Cost 2 Imbalance Cost 1<Imbalance Cost 2
2) Colony Movement
In each generation, each colony moves linearly toward the Bid power 2 Bid power 1
corresponding imperialist while also searches the space around Keep the colony Exchange colony with imperialist
the imperialist by using a deviation operator. Since the pro- (b) Process of position update of imperialist and colony about bid power
posed model has multiple constraints, the evolution of the al-
gorithm will yield some infeasible solutions. To improve the Fig. 4. Movement and update of the colony
search efficiency of the algorithm, we adopt the following con- 5) Termination
straint handling procedures to adjust an infeasible colony to be The algorithm terminates when the preset maximum itera-
feasible. tion number is reached.
For an infeasible colony, firstly the dimensional values rep-
resenting the depot and virtual nodes are removed, and then the V. SIMULATION ANALYSIS
remaining dimensional values of the colony is subtracted by
the imperialist to calculate the ‘distance’ between the colony A. Experiment Setup
and the imperialist. This distance is then multiplied by a factor 1) Microgrid Configuration
in the range of (0, 1), and added to the colony to generate a In this study, we use the microgrid system based on IEEE
new colony. Since the customer nodes are integer variables, the 33-bus distribution system to do the simulation [28]. The cou-

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Transactions on Sustainable Energy

pling point of the microgrid and main grid is node 12, and the the fixed electricity price in [18]. Imbalance electricity prices
logistics distribution system is connected to the microgrid on are set according to [32].
node 13. The microgrid system consisted of two wind power TABLE II
farms connected on nodes 17 and 21, respectively, and each EV PARAMETERS
wind farm includes two turbines with the same configuration. Parameter lk lavg ,k Qk ,max Yk , max v car ,k K
The parameters of each wind turbine are shown in Table I [29]. Value 1.15 0.75 45 2000 40 3*100
The forecasted profiles of the expected values of the total wind Parameter Bk Pfast max
Pdch max TBk mik ,max 0, k / 1,k
, k / Pch, k
power output and the local load are shown in Fig. 5. The pa- Value 4027 90 6/9 3050 300000 10/1.3
rameters of the wind speed probabilistic distribution are shown
in Fig. 6, and the expectation and deviation of load forecast are B. EV Routing Results Analysis
shown in Table I. We use the MCS technique to sample sce- For comparison, we firstly set up two cases, under which
narios of uncertainties. The optimal results in the following the EVs do not participate in the microgrid operation. In the
tables and figures are the expected values, i.e. the average of comparison case, the charging time and power of EVs are not
the results from all the MCS sample scenarios. optimized, but follow pre-specified charging plans. The EV
TABLE I drive routes are optimized only by minimizing the logistics
WIND TURBINE AND LOAD PARAMETERS distribution distance. Specifically, in case 1 the EVs are as-
Parameter Pn, rats vn,in vn ,out vn, rats  d , n, t E ( Pd ,n,t ) /  d ,n,t sumed to be fully charged directly (fast charge) in the distribu-
Value 2.5 6 11.7 10 0 0.15 tion process and sent back to the depot; in case 2, the EVs are
assumed to be fully charged directly (regular charge) and sent
18
back to the depot. In the two cases, in the depot they are as-
16 sumed to be regularly charged to the SOC upper limit. Case 3
Expected Value of Power/(MW)

is the proposed model, where the charging time and power of

14
EVs are optimized to coordinate the microgrid operation. The
12
EV drive routes and charging strategies are optimized by min-
imizing the microgrid operation cost.
10 The optimized drive routes of three EVs for a distribution
8
task under the three cases are shown in Fig. 7. The correspond-
ing driving route miles and microgrid operation costs are
6
0 5 10 15 20 25
shown in Table III. From Fig. 7, it can be seen that under case
TIme/(h) 2, the EV drive routes have the largest number of crossovers
Local load power Total wind power
and miles, and one charging station is accessed multiple times
Fig. 5. The profiles of the expected values of total wind power and local load
(highlighted as the circle in Fig. 7). This shows that the regular
9
charging of EVs in the logistics distribution could increase the
8 charging time and microgrid operation costs.
parameters of Weibull Distribution(m/s)

case 1 case 2 case 3

7 100 100 100

4
50 50 50

2
0 5 10 15 20 25
TIme/(h)
Scale Parameters Shape Parameters
0 0 0
0 50 100 0 50 100 0 50 100
Fig. 6. The probabilistic distribution parameters of wind speed Customer Charging Station Depot

2) Logistics Distribution System Configuration Fig. 7. Drive routes of three 3 cases

We study a 32-node logistics distribution system to test the TABLE III
proposed method. The data of depot and location are obtained MICROGRID OPERATION COST COMPARISON
Case 1 Case 2 Case 3
from the benchmark instances A-n32 VRP system [30]. The Miles (km) 710090 913102 759257
system consists of one depot, three charging stations and 28 Depreciation Cost ($) 1803.2 1674.1 1969.5
customers. The distribution tasks of the customers are divided Charging Cost ($) 15035.6 21041.2 13893.7
into 100 groups, where in each group the customer demand and Imbalance Cost ($) 10296.1 9237.6 6141.3
Energy Purchase Cost ($) 12026.5 12537.7 10562.6
unloading time are set according to [18], and performed by 3
Total Cost ($) 39161.4 44490.6 32567.1
EVs. All the tasks are required to be distributed in one hour.
For the 300 EVs in the distribution, the technical parameters of Comparing case 1 and case 3, it can be seen that the drive
each EV are obtained from mid-size Chery E8 [31], as shown route miles of EVs under case 3 are slightly large than those
in Table II. The electricity price for fast-charging comes from under case 1. However, the charging cost under case 3 is

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Transactions on Sustainable Energy

smaller than that under case 1. This cost reduction is due to the
coordinated optimizations of charging time and power.
C. Microgrid Operation Results Analysis
The day-ahead bid and actual tie-line power under the three
cases are shown in Fig. 8. It can be seen that under case 3, the
deviations between the actual and day-ahead bid tie-line pow-
ers are much smaller than those under both case 1 and case 2.
The results clearly show that by optimizing the charging
schemes of EVs, the tie-line power fluctuations are significant-
ly reduced, which further decreases the imbalance costs.
case 1
10 10
8 8
6 6
Tie-line power(MW)
be charged or discharged for the remaining day (charge or dis-
charge power is zero). On the contrary, for case 3, while EVs
are not in use for logistics distribution, they are connected to
the grid to charge or discharge power (negative and positive
values of power). In other words, in case 3 EVs play an active
role in balancing the power fluctuation in the microgrid (power
fluctuations are the blue bars in Fig. 9), thus reducing power
imbalance cost.
E. Impact of EV Starting Time
In this section, we have studied the impacts of EV starting
case 2 case 3
time on the effect of balancing power fluctuation in the mi-
10
crogrid. In Fig. 10, the proposed model is compared with re-
8
sults of different EV starting time, i.e., 6:00 am, 12:00 pm and
18:00 pm. We can see that the charging/discharging power
6
near starting time in all cases is near zero, as circled in Fig. 10.

Tie-line power(MW)
Tie-line power(MW)

4 4 4 Compared with different EV starting time, the proposed model

optimally determines the starting time of 0:00 am, which expe-
2 2 2
riences the smallest tie-power fluctuation. Be noted that the
0 0 0 largest tie-power fluctuation occurs when the starting time is
set to 18:00 pm, which is close to peak hours. Moreover, the
-2
0 5 10 15
Time(h)
20 25
-2
0 5 10 15 20 25
-2
0 5 10 15
Time(h)
20 25 detailed microgrid operation costs for these four starting time
Time(h)

Actual tie-line power Bid power

are given in Table V. The imbalance cost for the proposed
Fig. 8. Bid power and actual tie-line power under cases 1-3 model is the lowest ($6141.3), while for starting time of 18:00
pm is the highest ($9900.7).
D. EV Charging/Discharging Results Analysis
Proposed model 06:00
Table IV illustrates the charging time and arrival time for 2 2

cases 1-3 when considering routes 1-3. For routes 1 and 2, the
Power (MW)

Power (MW)
0 0
required charging time for case 3 is the shortest (0.1684 and
-2
0.3027 hour). The arrival time for case 3 is also the shortest -2

(3.7718 and 4.4265 hour respectively for routes 1 and 2). The -4
0 5 10 15 20 25
-4
0 5 10 15 20 25
implication based on the above observation is that by obtaining Time (h) Time (h)

the optimal operational strategy, case 3 can reduce the fast 12:00 18:00
2 2
charge time and some EVs can return the logistics center to
Power (MW)

Power (MW)

0 0
participate in the microgrid operation via vehicle-to-grid (V2G)
technology. -2 -2

TABLE IV -4 -4
FAST CHARGING DURATION AND ARRIVAL TIME 0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25
Time (h) Time (h)
Sub Route Charging Time Arrival Time
Charging/discharging power Tie-line power fluctuation
No. case 1 case 2 case 3 case 1 case 2 case 3
Fig. 10. EV regular charging/discharging power under different starting time
1 0.4957 3.9407 0.1684 4.9621 8.2640 3.7718
2 0.5732 5.6691 0.3027 4.6778 9.4465 4.4265 TABLE V
MICROGRID OPERATION COST WITH DIFFERENT STARTING TIME
3 / / 0.3575 3.2703 2.7959 5.2034
0:00 (by proposed
Starting time (h) 06:00 12:00 18:00
model)
2 Depreciation cost ($) 1969.5 1743.3 1917.6 2021.3
Fast Charging Cost ($) 13893.7 14774.8 15703.1 14975.0
Imbalance Cost ($) 6141.3 7595.1 8037.4 9900.7
Power (MW)

0
Energy Purchase Cost ($) 10562.6 11125.1 11137.7 12889.1
Total Cost ($) 32567.1 35238.3 36795.8 39786.1
-2

As seen, the starting time of 6:00 am is more economical,

-4 compared to starting time of 12:00 pm and 18:00 pm. Moreo-
0 5 10 15 20 25
Time (h) ver, although the depreciation, fast charging and energy pur-
case 1 case 2 case 3 Tie-line power fluctuation chase costs are higher than starting time of 6:00 am, the total
Fig. 9. EV regular charging/discharging power cost for the proposed model is the lowest ($32567.1). This is
Fig. 9 illustrates the EV regular charging/discharging power mainly because that the proposed model can significantly save
for cases 1-3 and the tie-line power fluctuation in the microgrid. the energy imbalance cost ($6141.3), by allowing EVs actively
We can see that for cases 1 and 2, EVs are charged in the to participate in microgrid operations.
morning (negative values represent charge power) and will not

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10

F. Impacts of Network Constraints caused by intermittent renewable energy, our microgrid opera-
To demonstrate the impacts of network constraints, we have tion model is of importance.
added two cases in this section. Case 4 considers the line con- h=0.1854 h=0.3854
20 20
gestions on l15-16 and l19-20 ; case 5 considers the line con-

Tie-line pwer(MW)

Tie-line pwer(MW)
10 10

gestions on l12-13 and l13-14 . The actual tie-line power and 0 0

bid power of the microgrid are compared in Fig. 11 for case 3- -10 -10

5 (note that case 3 does not consider network constraints). -20 -20
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25
case 3 case 4 case 5
10 10 8 Time(h) Time(h)
h=0.5854 h=0.7854
7 25 15
8 8

Tie-line pwer(MW)

Tie-line pwer(MW)
6 20
10
6 6 5 15
TIe-line Power(MW)

TIe-line Power(MW)

TIe-line Power(MW)

4 10
4
5
4
3 5

2 2 2 0 0
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25
1 Time(h) Time(h)
0 0 Actual tie-line power Bid pwer
0
Fig. 12. Tie-line power deviations with different shape parameter.
-2 -2 -1
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 10 20 0 5 10 15 20 25
Time(h) Time(h) Time(h)
c=2.8292 c=3.8292
Actual tie-line power Bid power Tie-line power(MW) 15 20

Tie-line power(MW)
Fig. 11. Bid power and actual tie-line power under cases 3-5 10 15

In case 4, since congestion occurs on the line connecting 5 10

wind power to the main grid, the outputs of wind power are
constrained. Thus the difference between actual tie-line power 0
0 5 10 15 20 25
5
0 5 10 15 20 25
and bid power of the microgrid is smaller for case 4, in contrast Time(h) Time(h)
c=4.8292 c=5.8292
to case 3. Moreover, in case 5, since the congestion occurs on 20 20
the line connecting the depot to the main grid, the
Tie-line power(MW)

Tie-line power(MW)
15
charge/discharging power for EVs are constrained. Thus the 15
10
difference between actual tie-line power and bid power of the
5
microgrid is larger for case 5, in contrast to case 3. This im- 10

plies that when EVs charging or discharging power is con- 0 5 10 15 20 25

0
0 5 10 15 20 25
strained, their role in balancing power fluctuation will be jeop- Time(h) Time(h)

ardized, thus increasing the system operational cost. Bid power Actual Tie-line power

Fig. 13. Tie-line power deviations with different scalar parameters.

G. Impact of Wind Speed Uncertainties
TABLE VI
In this paper, wind speed is modelled by the Weibull distri- IMBALANCE COST UNDER DIFFERENT DISTRIBUTION PARAMETERS
bution, which is determined by the shape and scalar parameters. h (m/s) 0.1854 0.3854 0.5854 0.7854
In general the standard deviation (Std.) of the Weibull distribu- Imbalance Cost($) 29368.2 20999.4 13413.3 10763.4
c (m/s) 2.8292 3.8292 4.8292 5.8292
tion has a positive correlation with the scalar parameter and a Imbalance Cost($) 8757.2 9310.7 11410.7 12738.3
negative correlation with the shape parameter. Note that a
higher Std. means the uncertainty of wind speed as well as H. Impacts of the Control of Household EVs on the Mi-
wind power output is increased. We have studied the impacts crogrid
of different shape and scalar parameters on tie-line power of In order to study the effectiveness of renewable fluctuation
the microgrid. balance by EVs with different purposes, we consider 60 com-
As seen in Fig. 12, when the shape parameter h increases monly used household EVs with V2G functions, whose pa-
from 0.1854 to 0.7854, meaning less uncertain wind power (i.e. rameters are set according to [33]. These EVs are divided into
lower Std.), the difference between the actual tie-line power 3 groups, where the EVs of each group departs from different
and bid (scheduled) power becomes small. Moreover, as seen nodes (nodes A, B, C in Fig. 14), and drive towards the desti-
in Fig. 13, when the scalar parameter c increases from nation node D. After arriving at the destination, the household
2.8292 to 5.8292, meaning that more uncertain wind power (i.e. EVs are parked in the public/household parking lots, and are
higher Std.), the difference between the actual tie-line power charged/discharged to participate in the microgrid operation.
and bid power is more evident. The optimized drive route of a representative EV in each group
Moreover, Table VI gives the different imbalance costs with is shown in Fig. 14.
different Weibull distribution parameters. Corresponding to a In Fig. 15, we report the optimized day-ahead bids and tie-
higher shape parameter h , imbalance cost experiences a line power of 3 cases: the microgrid without logistics distribu-
downward trend, and this is an opposite case for the scale pa- tion EVs and household EVs (case 6), the microgrid with lo-
rameter c . Thus in terms of reducing the imbalance cost gistics distribution EVs (case 3), and the microgrid with both

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11

logistics distribution EVs and household EVs (case 7). It can self-adaptive mechanism to dynamically update its global
be seen that in the periods of 11:00-13:00 and 17:00-19:00, the searching parameter, which makes it be better aware the evolu-
household EVs in the parking lots are coordinated charged/ tion process and thus convergent faster than standard ICA.
discharged to compensate the inadequacy of logistics distribu-
tion EVs for V2G functions, due to the fact that most of the SaICA
40000 Standard ICA
logistics distribution EVs have not returned to the depot. The Patheno-Genetic Algorithm

simulation results thus clear show that the renewable fluctua-

Microgrid Operation Cost ($)

tions can be significantly reduced through the coordination of 38000
EVs for different purposes.
100
B Household EVs parameters: 36000
max
Qk,max=29 kWh Pdch,k=3.3 kW
80 mik,max=138 km Pmax=3.3 kW
ch,k
route 3
34000

60
A
Y/km

32000
C 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
40 Generation
Fig. 16. Mean convergence profiles of three algorithms
route 1
20
route 2 VI. CONCLUSION
D
This paper proposes an operational planning framework for
0
0 20 40 60 80 100 the microgrid consisting of the logistics distribution system
X/km
Customer Charging Station Depot and RESs. In the microgrid, EVs are primarily used for the
Fig. 14. The optimized drive route of a representative EV in each group logistics distribution purpose, and they can also be controlled
case 3 case 6 case 7
to smooth the fluctuations of the RESs. The proposed model
10 10 12
optimizes the EVs drive routes, time durations of fast charging,
8 8
10 regular charging/discharging power, so that the deviations of
the bid power and the actual power outputs of the microgrid
8
6 6 can be minimized. The stochastic characteristics of wind power
TIe-line Power(MW)

TIe-line Power(MW)

TIe-line Power(MW)

4 4
2 2
0 0
-2 -2
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10
Time(h) Time(h)
Actual Tie-line power
Fig. 15. Bid power and actual Tie-line power under cases 6-7
I. Validation of SaICA
In order to validate the efficiency of SaICA, we use the
three algorithms to solve the proposed model, i.e. SaICA,
standard ICA, and Patheno-Genetic algorithm (it is used in our
previous work [18]). For all the three algorithms, the popula-
tion sizes are set to 100 and maximum generation number is
set to 500. For each algorithm, we run 10 trials to get the aver-
age convergence curve, shown as Fig. 16.
From Fig. 16, it can be seen that the Patheno-Genetic algo-
rithm can quick converge to a good solution, but it is trapped
to the premature in the later generations. SaICA is able to con-
tinue to search for the better solution, and outperforms with the
other two algorithms. The strong searching capability of SaI-
CA is explainable. Firstly, both ICA and SaICA are essentially
multiple sub-population based algorithms. This feature makes
them can search the different areas of the problem space, thus
lead to stronger global searching ability than the single popula-
tion algorithm such as Patheno-Genetic algorithm. Secondly,
instead of using the fixed control parameters, SaICA utilizes
6
and load variations are considered in the model. Besides, the
4 logistics distribution are modelled. Simulations are performed
2
on a microgrid system with 32-node EV logistics distribution,
and the numerical results show that the coordinate dispatch of
0
the EVs can significantly smooth wind power fluctuations and
-2
0 5 10 15 20 25
reduce the microgrid operational cost. Overall, the proposed
15 20 25
Time(h) model provides insight and inspiration regarding how to dis-
Bid power patch power in the system, control EV charge and discharge,
and select travel routes in the logistics distribution and other
purposes.
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BIOGRAPHIES
Hongming Yang (M’12) received her M.Sc degree in Electrical Engineering
from Wuhan University in 1997. She received her Ph.D. degree in electrical
engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2003.
She was a Research Associate in the Hong Kong Polytechnic University
during 2009-2010, a visiting scholar in North Carolina State University during
2010-2011, and a Research Fellow in the University of Newcastle during
2013-2014. Currently, she is a full Professor in Changsha University of
Science and Technology. Her research interests include power system analysis
and power markets.
Hao Pan is currently pursuing the M.S. degree in electrical engineering from
the Changsha University of Science and Technology, Changsha, China. His
current research interests include power market and power system optimization.
Fengji Luo (M’13) obtained the B.S. and M.S. degrees in software engineer-
ing from Chongqing University, Chongqing, China, in 2006 and 2009, respec-
tively. He received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Univer-
sity of Newcastle, Australia, in 2014. Currently, he is a postdoctoral researcher
of the School of Civil Engineering, The University of Sydney, Australia. His
research interests include renewable energy, power demand side management,
and computational intelligence and its applications in smart grid.
Jing Qiu (M’14) is now a Research Associate at the Center for Intelligent
Electricity Networks (CIEN), The University of Newcastle, Australia. He
obtained his B.Eng. degree in control engineering from Shandong University,
China, M.Sc. degree in environmental policy and management, majoring in
carbon financing in the power sector, from The University of Manchester,
U.K., and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from The University of Newcastle,
Australia. His areas of interest include electricity market modeling, power
system planning, renewable energy, carbon emission reduction and risk man-
agement.
Pengxing Zhang is currently pursuing the M.S. degree in electrical
engineering from the Changsha University of Science and Technology,
Changsha, China. His current research interests include EV and power system
optimization
Mingyong Lai received the Ph.D. degree in systems engineering from the
National University of Defense Technology in 1997. He is currently a Full
Professor with the Changsha University of Science and Technology. His
special fields of interest include management systems engineering and
industrial economics.
Zhao Yang Dong (M’99–SM’06) received the Ph.D. degree from the
University of Sydney, Australia, in 1999. He is now a Professor and Head of
the School of Electrical and Information Engineering at the University of
Sydney. He was previously Ausgrid Chair Professor and Director of the Centre
for Intelligent Electricity Networks (CIEN), University of Newcastle, Australia.
He also held academic and industrial positions with the Hong Kong
Polytechnic University and Transend Networks, Tasmania, Australia. His
research interest includes Smart Grid, power system planning, power system
security, load modeling, renewable energy systems, electricity market, and
computational intelligence.