An Optimal Scheduling and Distributed Pricing Mechanism for Multi-Region Electric Vehicle Charging in Smart Grid

Despite the universal importance of price based demand response (DR) for managing electric vehicle (EV) charging load, the academic literature has explored various mechanisms to its implementation. The prequel to this work has demonstrated that implementation of load management schemes on the basis of price based DR programs leads to costlier scheduling for low or constant energy consumers. In this regard, the proposed work has considered and expanded the same idea from analytical as well as implementation point of view to multiple EV charging regions and respective loads. We present a novel mechanism to calculate EV charging prices using individualized energy consumption patterns of EVs in each region. In this regard, all EV regions/stations receive a dynamic price signal which is non-discriminatory in nature. The dynamic price signals are specifically designed to mitigate the impact of discriminatory prices on end user's cost. Furthermore, the other objectives of these non-discriminatory prices are to lower energy cost and rebound peaks without affecting utility objective (i.e., net revenue). Initially, a new mathematical model is presented to calculate charging prices based on real time load demand and market dynamics. Then relatively a well behaved functional form of the optimization problem is formulated and the cost minimization objective function is solved by using genetic algorithm (GA). The optimization program successfully converges to give global optimum solution validating the effectiveness of proposed mechanism. Finally, the analytical and simulation results are conducted to show the achievements of our proposed work in terms of fair cost distribution with high user satisfaction. It is also proved that in both mechanisms, the utility's revenue remains unaffected.