Optimal energy management system using biogeography based optimization for grid-connected MVDC microgrid with photovoltaic, hydrogen system, electric vehicles and Z-source converters

•Study of MVDC microgrid with PV, hydrogen system and electric vehicles.•Configuration based on Z-source converters that reduces the number of power converters.•Development of optimal energy management system (EMS) using biogeography-based optimization.•EMS achieved a notable improvement in the equivalent hydrogen consumption/generation. Currently, the technology associated with charging stations for electric vehicles (EV) needs to be studied and improved to further encourage its implementation. This paper presents a new energy management system (EMS) based on a Biogeography-Based Optimization (BBO) algorithm for a hybrid EV charging station with a configuration that integrates Z-source converters (ZSC) into medium voltage direct current (MVDC) grids. The EMS uses the evolutionary BBO algorithm to optimize a fitness function defining the equivalent hydrogen consumption/generation. The charging station consists of a photovoltaic (PV) system, a local grid connection, two fast charging units and two energy storage systems (ESS), a battery energy storage (BES) and a complete hydrogen system with fuel cell (FC), electrolyzer (LZ) and hydrogen tank. Through the use of the BBO algorithm, the EMS manages the energy flow among the components to keep the power balance in the system, reducing the equivalent hydrogen consumption and optimizing the equivalent hydrogen generation. The EMS and the configuration of the charging station based on ZSCs are the main contributions of the paper. The behaviour of the EMS is demonstrated with three EV connected to the charging station under different conditions of sun irradiance. In addition, the proposed EMS is compared with a simpler EMS for the optimal management of ESS in hybrid configurations. The simulation results show that the proposed EMS achieves a notable improvement in the equivalent hydrogen consumption/generation with respect to the simpler EMS. Thanks to the proposed configuration, the output voltage of the components can be upgraded to MVDC, while reducing the number of power converters compared with other configurations without ZSC.