Unsplittable Load Balancing in a Network of Charging Stations Under QoS Guarantees

TL;DR

This paper presents a game theoretic decentralized control mechanism for EV charging stations to balance load, improve revenue, and ensure QoS amidst increasing grid stress and uneven EV distribution.

Contribution

It introduces a novel game theoretic approach that considers spatial EV distribution and offers incentives to optimize load balancing, revenue, and QoS in charging networks.

Findings

Significant reduction in grid strain and customer blocking probability.

Enhanced revenue generation without compromising QoS.

Effective handling of complex, real-world EV demand scenarios.

Abstract

The operation of the power grid is becoming more stressed, due to the addition of new large loads represented by Electric Vehicles (EVs) and a more intermittent supply due to the incorporation of renewable sources. As a consequence, the coordination and control of projected EV demand in a network of fast charging stations becomes a critical and challenging problem. In this paper, we introduce a game theoretic based decentralized control mechanism to alleviate negative impacts from the EV demand. The proposed mechanism takes into consideration the non-uniform spatial distribution of EVs that induces uneven power demand at each charging facility, and aims to: (i) avoid straining grid resources by offering price incentives so that customers accept being routed to less busy stations, (ii) maximize total revenue by serving more customers with the same amount of grid resources, and (iii) provide charging service to customers with a certain level of Quality-of-Service (QoS), the latter defined as the long term customer blocking probability. We examine three scenarios of increased complexity that gradually approximate real world settings. The obtained results show that the proposed framework leads to substantial performance improvements in terms of the aforementioned goals, when compared to current state of affairs.