Renewable Energy-Based EV Charging Infrastructure: Architectures, Smart Energy Management, and Grid Integration
Abstract
Electric vehicle (EV) adoption is outpacing grid-only charging infrastructure, which aggravates peak demand, causes voltage instability, and is difficult to deploy in weak-grid or remote regions. Renewable-integrated charging - combining solar, wind, and hybrid generation with storage, power electronics, and intelligent control - offers a more resilient alternative. This paper presents a systematically screened review of renewablebased EV charging systems, covering architectures, storage and conversion technologies, energy management strategies from rulebased to learning-based control, grid integration, vehicle-togrid (V2G) operation, and station planning. Ten representative studies are analyzed in depth and compared in tabular form, and reported outcomes from the wider literature are synthesized: renewable self-sufficiency ratios of 75-78%, storagesizing reductions of 30-50%, and levelized-cost reductions of 15-40% for hybrid solar-wind and second-life-battery designs. Beyond the core comparison, this revised version adds a technical comparison of control algorithms, a regional deployment analysis, a dedicated treatment of digital-twin-based energy management, a discussion of practical deployment barriers, and an analysis of user-adoption and policy factors. Unlike prior surveys, which typically treat architecture, control, and planning as separate literatures, this review links these threads explicitly and identifies where they remain disconnected - notably in data-grounded hybrid deployment studies, cross-manufacturer interoperability, and unified frameworks linking generation, storage, control, and policy. The paper closes with a conceptual architecture and a research roadmap spanning AI-driven scheduling, digital twins, and grid-forming EV integration.