Reducing communication requirements for electric vehicle charging using vehicle-originating-signals

We propose a method for reducing the communication requirements for electric vehicle (EV) charging control based on Vehicle-Originating-Signals (VOS). The original VOS approach requires a message exchange between every EV and the aggregator for every time step. This can cause the load on communication systems to increase, especially as the number of EVs increases and the control intervals become more granular. We explore (i) the reduction of EV-originating messages, (ii) the reduction of aggregator-originating messages, and (iii) the challenges in combining both reduction methods. EVs reduce the number of messages by including possible future values in a single message. The aggregator reduces the number of messages by sending single broadcast signals. Combining both methods requires a retransmission protocol. For the evaluation, we compare the original and the improved VOS approaches on a load leveling scenario based on electricity demand, solar generation, and car mobility data from Munich, Germany. The results show that it is possible to reduce the overall message requirements with a minor effect on performance. With savings of over 70% in number of messages, these improvements contribute towards more network-friendly solutions for smart EV charging.