Impact of Electric Vehicles on Residential Condominiums

Abstract

The number of electric vehicles in Costa Rica has increased steadily in recent years. If purchasing power is considered, the owners of electric vehicles likely live in horizontal or vertical residential condominiums, which have a single connection point to the electricity distribution network. For this reason, an uncontrolled increase of electric vehicles in a horizontal or vertical condominium can jeopardize the capacity of the circuit, especially the transformer and the protection. This article studies the impact that the installation of chargers for electric vehicles in a condominium can have. In addition, different strategies for minimizing the technical and user impact were compared. The results show that using renewable energies is not recommended given the probability distributions of charging time of electric vehicles. Instead, the use of energy management strategies is the most attractive alternative.