Optimising the reliability of electric vehicle charging stations with vehicle-to-vehicle charging capabilities

The growing demand for electric vehicles (EVs) has highlighted the need for resilient and adaptable charging infrastructures, but traditional EV charging stations (EVCSs) often struggle to meet the demand during instances of energy shortage, leading to service interruptions and users’ inconveniences. This study investigates the integration of Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) energy exchange to mitigate energy shortages at EVCSs, allowing EVs with higher battery energy storage to transfer energy directly to other EVs with a lower battery energy storage, thereby supplementing the charging station's energy resources during periods of energy shortage. The proposed energy management system utilises V2V exchange to optimise energy availability and offer EV owners the arbitrage opportunity to sell energy to one another via the EVCS infrastructure. By developing energy exchange mathematical models, and simulating various scenarios using MATLAB/Simulink, the effectiveness of the charging control is evaluated under different battery conditions such as State of Charge and temperature, for which the batteries’ charging rate (C-rate) is limited within 0.1 and 0.2. Results obtained from the study show an enhanced EVCS performance by reducing downtime, maintaining an average of 85 % availability rate, an average of 0.4 % in temperature reduction due to ambient effects, and fostering a cooperative energy ecosystem that could extend operational resilience across station networks.