Game-Theoretic Electric Vehicle Charging Management Resilient to Non-Ideal User Behavior

TL;DR

This paper models a game-theoretic approach to EV charging management that remains effective despite non-ideal user behaviors, demonstrating resilience in cost savings and peak reduction.

Contribution

It introduces a two-stage non-cooperative game model incorporating prospect theory to account for non-ideal aggregator actions in EV charging coordination.

Findings

The game reaches a subgame perfect ε-Nash equilibrium under ideal and non-ideal actions.

Coordinated EV charging significantly reduces energy costs and peak-to-average ratios.

The strategy is resilient to non-ideal behaviors of aggregators.

Abstract

In this paper, an electric vehicle (EV) charging competition, among EV aggregators that perform coordinated EV charging, is explored while taking into consideration potential non-ideal actions of the aggregators. In the coordinated EV charging strategy presented in this paper, each aggregator determines EV charging start time and charging energy profiles to minimize overall EV charging energy cost by including consideration of the actions of the neighboring aggregators. The competitive interactions of the aggregators are modeled by developing a two-stage non-cooperative game among the aggregators. The game is then studied under prospect theory to examine the impacts of non-ideal actions of the aggregators in selecting EV charging start times according to subjectively evaluating their opponents' actions. It is shown that the non-cooperative interactions among the aggregators lead to a subgame perfect $\epsilon$-Nash equilibrium when the game is played with either ideal, or non-ideal, actions of the aggregators. A case study presented demonstrates that the benefits of the coordinated EV charging strategy, in terms of energy cost savings and peak-to-average ratio reductions, are significantly resilient to non-ideal actions of the aggregators.