In last years, the power system operators are tackling many challenges for the renewable energies integration on the grid. Further, the expected increase of electrical demand due to the uncoordinated contemporary charging of a huge number of Electric Vehicles (EVs) can create chaotic phenomena with a negative impact especially on the distribution network. Help can be offered by the deployment of Smart Grid technologies, such as Smart Metering S. In last years, the power system operators are tackling many challenges for the renewable energies integration on the grid. Further, the expected increase of electrical demand due to the uncoordinated contemporary charging of a huge number of Electric Vehicles (EVs) can create chaotic phenomena with a negative impact especially on the distribution network. Help can be offered by the deployment of Smart Grid technologies, such as Smart Metering Systems (SMSs), Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and Energy Storage Systems (ESSs). In particular, in Micro-Grids, Battery ESSs (BESSs) can play a fundamental role and can become fundamental for the integration of EV fast charging stations and distributed generations. In this case the storage can have peak shaving, load shifting and power quality functions. The ESSs can provide ancillary services also on the grid as the reactive control to adjust the power factor. In the present paper, a monitoring control program to manage the reactive power of a real ESS in a Micro-Grid has been implemented. The system is a prototype, designed, implemented and now available at ENEA (Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development) labs. A wide experimental activity has been performed on the prototype system in order to test this functionality for the integration in a bigger Smart Grid available at the same ENEA labs including the Micro-grid. The integration has been possible, thanks to the free ICT protocols used by th. Charging stationsEnergy storageInformation and communication technologiesSmart GridMicro-GridSmart meteringA Smart Grid is commonly defined as a portion of an MV/LV distribution network, assembled and operated by the Distribution System Operator (DSO) with the help of ICT, in order to improve the efficiency, reliability, economics, and sustainability of the production and distribution of electricity (Jackson 2014). The typical scale of a Smart Grid can be considered as a portion of an MV system supplied by an HV/MV substation.A Micro-Grid is commonly defined as a group of interconnected loads and Distributed Energy Resources (DER) with clearly defined electrical boundaries that acts as a single controllable entity with respect to the main grid. In other words it is a smaller portion of the network, typically supplied by an MV/LV substation operated by a private user (or even by an aggregator) with the help of ICT (Tao et al., 2011). Typically, Smart Grids and Micro-Grids contain Distributed Generation (DG), Smart Metering Systems (SMSs) and an ICT infrastructure (Skopik et al., 2014, Falvo et al., 2013, Arboleya et al., 2015). The differences between Smart Grid and Micro-Grid are not only in terms of energy scale and voltage level but also in terms of goal of the operation (Huang et al., 2014). A Smart Grid operates in order to resolve the power unbalancing issues and other technical problems in real time and the DSO, that is, its player could offer new energy services to the users. A Micro-Grid operates in order to opti. 2.1. European case studiesBased on the content of the M/490 EU Mandate the CEN, CENELEC, and ETSI have been requested to develop a framework to enable European Standardization Organizations to perform continuous standard enhancement and development in the field of Smart Grids (Knapp and Samani, 2013). The EU wants to provide greater coherency of actions, as well as technological cooperation and a wider market. Energy storage is closely related to policy on renewable electricity. Here, member states have differing interests and possibilities and are at different stages of development (from near zero to over 50% of electricity generation). Support for storage within the EU internal electricity market and regulatory adjustments to enable storage facilitate the progress towards a single internal electricity market in Europe. Energy storage should be integrated into, and should be supported by, all relevant existing and future EU energy and climate measures and legislation, including strategies on energy infrastructure, the Connecting Europe Facility, RES promotion, Smart Cities and Communities, completion of the Internal Market, Energy Efficiency Directive, Horizon 2020, 2050 Roadmap, as well as the forthcoming discussion on a 2030 Strategy.Different projects in EU have been founded to optimize and manage a wide range of different services that the storage can provide. Thes. A real implementation of a Micro-Grid has been designed, implemented and is now available at ENEA labs (Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development). The global Micro-Grid structure is shown in Fig. 1. It is a further development of the system already presented by Sbordone et al. (2015). The Micro-Grid includes a prototype of BESS equipped with Li-batteries inverted-controlled and a special EV fast charging station (Falvo et al., 2013). A picture of the real system in ENEA labs, during the tests on Nissan EV charge, is reported in Fig. 2. All main devices inside the Micro-Grid and the used communication protocols as:•1.Battery Energy Storage System.•2.Smart metering devices.•3.EV charging station.
