We propose a novel way to use Electric Vehicles (EVs) as dynamic mobile energy storage with the goal to support grid balancing during peak load times. EVs seeking parking in a busy expensive inner city area, can get free parking with a valet company in exchange for being utilized for grid support. The valet company would have an agreement with the local utility company to receive varying rewards for discharging EVs at designated times and locations of need (say, where power lines are congested). Given vehicle availabilities, the valet company would compute an optimal schedule of which vehicle to utilize where and when so as to maximize rewards collected. Our contributions are a detailed description of this new concept along with supporting theory to bring it to fruition. On the theory side, we provide new hardness results, as well as efficient algorithms with provable performance guarantees that we also test empirically.
EV charging and discharging has previously been studied in the context of power loss minimization @cite_2 , frequency regulation @cite_8 , voltage regulation @cite_2 @cite_3 , peak shaving @cite_18 @cite_13 , and supporting renewable energy sources @cite_14 . We refer the reader to a recent survey by Amjad al @cite_17 on various optimization approaches and objectives employed for EV charging. Our goal is most closely related to peak shaving, however the above-mentioned work on that is very different from ours in that it either does not consider discharging @cite_13 , or does not incentivize the EV owners @cite_18 .
@cite_18 @cite_14 @cite_8 @cite_3 @cite_2 @cite_13 @cite_17
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In this paper, we consider delay-optimal charging scheduling of the electric vehicles (EVs) at a charging station with multiple charge points. The charging station is equipped with renewable energy generation devices and can also buy energy from power grids. The uncertainty of the arrival of the EV, the intermittence of the renewable energy, and the variation of the grid power price are taken into account and described as independent Markov processes. Meanwhile, the required charging energy for each EV is random. The goal is to minimize the mean waiting time for EVs under the long-term constraint on the cost. We propose queue mapping to convert the EV queue to the charging demand queue, and we prove the equivalence between the minimization of the two queues' average length. Then, we focus on the minimization for the average length of the charging demand queue under the long-term cost constraint. We propose a framework of Markov decision process (MDP) to investigate this constrained stochastic optimization problem. The system state includes the charging demand queue length, the charging demand arrival, the energy level in the storage battery of the renewable energy, the renewable energy arrival, and the grid power price. Additionally, the number of charging demands and the allocated energy from the storage battery compose the 2-D policy. We derive two necessary conditions of the optimal policy. Moreover, we discuss the reduction of the 2-D policy to be the number of charging demands only. We give the sets of system states for which charging no demand and charging as many demands as possible are optimal, respectively. Finally, we investigate the proposed policies numerically. Abstract We study the problem of efficiently charging a set of rechargeable nodes using a set of wireless chargers, under safety constraints on the electromagnetic radiation incurred. In particular, we define a new charging model that greatly differs from existing models in that it takes into account real technology restrictions of the chargers and nodes of the network, mainly regarding energy limitations. Our model also introduces non-linear constraints (in the time domain), that radically change the nature of the computational problems we consider. In this charging model, we present and study the Low Radiation Efficient Charging Problem (LREC), in which we wish to optimize the amount of “useful” energy transferred from chargers to nodes (under constraints on the maximum level of imposed radiation). We present several fundamental properties of this problem and provide indications of its hardness. Finally, we propose an iterative local improvement heuristic for LREC, which runs in polynomial time and we evaluate its performance via simulation. Our algorithm decouples the computation of the objective function from the computation of the maximum radiation and also does not depend on the exact formula used for the computation of the electromagnetic radiation in each point of the network, achieving good trade-offs between charging efficiency and radiation control; it also exhibits good energy balance properties. We provide extensive simulation results supporting our claims and theoretical results. We consider a queuing model with applications to electric vehicle (EV) charging systems in smart grids. We adopt a scheme where an Electric Service Company (ESCo) broadcasts a one bit signal to EVs, possibly indicating ‘on-peak’ periods during which electricity cost is high. EVs randomly suspend resume charging based on the signal. To model the dynamics of EVs we propose an M M ∞ queue with random interruptions, and analyze the dynamics using time-scale decomposition. There exists a trade-off: one may postpone charging activity to ‘off-peak’ periods during which electricity cost is cheaper, however this incurs extra delay in completion of charging. Using our model we characterize achievable trade-offs between the mean cost and delay perceived by users. Next we consider a scenario where EVs respond to the signal based on the individual loads. Simulation results show that peak electricity demand can be reduced if EVs carrying higher loads are less sensitive to the signal. The increasing market share of electric vehicles (EVs) makes large-scale charging stations indispensable infrastructure for integrating EVs into the future smart grid. Thus their operation modes have drawn great attention from researchers. One promising mode called park-and-charge was recently proposed. It allows people to park their EVs at a parking lot, where EVs can get charged during the parking time. This mode has been experimented and demonstrated in small scale. However, the missing of an efficient market mechanism is an important gap preventing its large-scale deployment. Existing pricing policies, e.g., pay-by-use and flat-rate pricing, would jeopardize the efficiency of electricity allocation and the corresponding social welfare in the park-and-charge mode, and thus are inapplicable. To find an efficient mechanism, this paper explores the feasibility and benefits of utilizing auction mechanism in the EV park-and-charge mode. The auction allows EV users to submit and update bids on their charging demand to the charging station, which makes corresponding electricity allocation and pricing decisions. To this end, we propose Auc2Charge, an online auction framework. Auc2Charge is truthful and individual rational. Running in polynomial time, it provides an efficient electricity allocation for EV users with a close-form approximation ratio on system social welfare. Through both theoretical analysis and numerical simulation, we demonstrate the efficacy of Auc2Charge in terms of social welfare and user satisfaction.