Data-Driven EV Load Profiles Generation Using a Variational Auto-Encoder

• Main Authors: Zhixin Pan, Jianming Wang, Wenlong Liao, Haiwen Chen, Dong Yuan, Weiping Zhu, Xin Fang, Zhen Zhu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-03-01
• Series: Energies
• Subjects: electric vehicles; load profiles; data-driven; variational automatic encoder
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/5/849

Although the penetration of electric vehicles (EVs) in distribution networks can improve the energy saving and emission reduction effects, its random and uncertain nature limits the ability of distribution networks to accept the load of EVs. To this end, establishing a load profile model of EV charging stations accurately and reasonably is of great significance to the planning, operation and scheduling of power system. Traditional generation methods for EV load profiles rely too much on experience, and need to set up a power load probability distribution in advance. In this paper, we propose a data-driven approach for load profiles of EV generation using a variational automatic encoder. Firstly, an encoder composed of deep convolution networks and a decoder composed of transposed convolution networks are trained using the original load profiles. Then, the new load profiles are obtained by decoding the random number which obeys a normal distribution. The simulation results show that EV load profiles generated by the deep convolution variational auto-encoder can not only retain the temporal correlation and probability distribution nature of the original load profiles, but also have a good restorative effect on the time distribution and fluctuation nature of the original power load.