Optimal decentralized protocol for electric vehicle charging

Motivated by the power-grid-side challenges in the integration of electric vehicles, we propose a decentralized protocol for negotiating day-ahead charging schedules for electric vehicles. The overall goal is to shift the load due to electric vehicles to fill the overnight electricity demand valley. In each iteration of the proposed protocol, electric vehicles choose their own charging profiles for the following day according to the price profile broadcast by the utility, and the utility updates the price profile to guide their behavior. This protocol is guaranteed to converge, irrespective of the specifications (e.g., maximum charging rate and deadline) of electric vehicles. At convergence, the l₂ norm of the aggregated demand is minimized, and the aggregated demand profile is as “flat” as it can possibly be. The proposed protocol needs no coordination among the electric vehicles, hence requires low communication and computation capability. Simulation results demonstrate convergence to optimal collections of charging profiles within few iterations.