High-Fidelity Analysis of EV Integration on Real Utility Feeders in Colorado

Technical Report · Wed Nov 19 00:00:00 EST 2025

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/3011892· OSTI ID:3011892

Ghosh, Shibani ^[1]; Jackson, Derek ^[1]; Kisacikoglu, Mithat John ^[1]; Liu, Zhaocai ^[1]; Panossian, Nadia ^[1]; Paudyal, Priti ^[1]; Pohl, Erik ^[1]; Ucer, Emin ^[1]; Zhang, Mingzhi ^[1]

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1. National Renewable Energy Lab., Golden, CO (United States)

Residential electric vehicle (EV) charging has the potential to alter long-held assumptions on load characteristics impacting distribution grid planning, operations, and design standards. This study identifies analysis and control methods to increase the affordability of residential EV charging both for Xcel Energy and their customers. The project also provides solutions for more reliable grid interconnection that can support a reliable utility business model prepared for increasing EV charging load in the coming years. For this project, we referenced Level 2 alternating current (AC) onboard charging profiles for various vehicle models and high-fidelity charging data collected at the experimental setup established at the EV Research Infrastructure Laboratory at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Next, we developed EV adoption models for 2030 and 2040 for the Boulder and Aurora regions in Colorado. Moreover, we evaluated different smart charging control algorithms and compared their performance. We developed time-of-use (TOU)-based and grid-aware active EV charging control methods and integrated them within the study region to understand field impacts. Diving deeper, we selected 10 feeders in Boulder and Aurora for high-fidelity grid modeling down to the house level. We executed detailed grid analysis comparing the smart charge management (SCM) algorithms we developed. Finally, we created a novel tool, Electric Vehicle Infrastructure--Distribution System Integration Tool (EVI-DiST), to integrate all the approaches in a single software environment to provide easy integration, fast simulation, and detailed evaluation capability for utility engineers and other stakeholders.

• Research Organization: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: Xcel Energy
• DOE Contract Number: AC36-08GO28308
• OSTI ID: 3011892
• Report Number(s): NREL/TP-5400-94231
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS
EV Charging
EV charging control
Xcel Energy
electric vehicles
power flow simulation
smart charge management
smart metering
utilities
utility grid