An improved minimum-cost charging schedule for large-scale penetration of electric vehicles

Abstract

Plug-in electric vehicles (EVs) have been considered as one of the important facilitators for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. With the growth of EV penetrations, uncoordinated charging scheduling could aggravate the grid load and thus smart charging management is becoming critical. In this paper, an EV charging cost model is first built, which takes into account the electricity rates, EV mobility, and EV battery and charger specifications. Then, the evaluation of the conventional charging schedule associated with minimizing users' cost is presented and two primary issues are illustrated including power surges and aggravated dynamic response for the grid. Furthermore, an improved minimum-cost strategy is proposed to mitigate these two issues and the corresponding algorithm is illustrated. Finally, the simulation results are provided to validate the proposed strategy.