Management of PHEV charging from the smart grid using sensor web services

Abstract

Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) have less fossil-fuel dependency, lower carbon emissions and lower operating costs than the conventional vehicles. On the other hand, wide adoption of PHEVs is expected to increase the load on the power grid. Sensor web services have recently emerged as promising tools that can provide remote management, data collection and querying capabilities for the sensor networks in the smart grid. In this paper, we use sensor web services for management PHEV charging in order to increase the administration ability of the utility over load and increase the control of the consumer on her energy expenses. In our application, the driver can remotely access the State of Charge (SOC) of her vehicle, provide a destination address and query cost and emissions for alternative fuel options. Moreover, the application communicates with the utility web services, learns the advertised critical peak periods and avoids charging the vehicle during those periods to protect the grid. We show that our scheme reduces driver expenses and vehicle emissions while providing an acceptable SOC level. In addition, we show that the application is efficient in terms of completion time and the code sizes are suitable for a sensor node.