An Online Pricing Mechanism for Electric Vehicle Parking Assignment and Charge Scheduling

In this paper, we design a pricing framework for online electric vehicle (EV) parking assignment and charge scheduling. Here, users with electric vehicles want to park and charge at electric-vehicle-supply-equipment (EVSEs) at different locations and arrive/depart throughout the day. The goal is to assign and schedule users to the available EVSEs while maximizing user utility and minimizing operational costs. Our formulation can accommodate multiple locations, limited resources, operational costs, as well as variable arrival patterns. With this formulation, the parking facility management can optimize for behind-the-meter solar integration and reduce costs due to procuring electricity from the grid. We use an online pricing mechanism to approximate the EVSE reservation problem's solution and we analyze the performance compared to the offline solution. Our numerical simulation validates the performance of the EVSE reservation system in a downtown area with multiple parking locations equipped with EVSEs.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures. To Appear, ACC 2019, Philadelphia, US

Pricing and Routing Mechanisms for Differentiated Services in an Electric Vehicle Public Charging Station Network

We consider a Charging Network Operator (CNO) that owns a network of Electric Vehicle (EV) public charging stations and wishes to offer a menu of differentiated service options for access to its stations. This involves designing optimal pricing and routing schemes for the setting where users cannot directly choose which station they use. Instead, they choose their priority level and energy request amount from the differentiated service menu, and then the CNO directly assigns them to a station on their path. This allows higher priority users to experience lower wait times at stations, and allows the CNO to directly manage demand, exerting a higher level of control that can be used to manage the effect of EV on the grid and control station wait times. We consider the scenarios where the CNO is a social welfare-maximizing or a profit-maximizing entity, and in both cases, design pricing-routing policies that ensure users reveal their true parameters to the CNO

Optimal Price of Anarchy in Cost-Sharing Games

The design of distributed algorithms is central to the study of multiagent systems control. In this paper, we consider a class of combinatorial cost-minimization problems and propose a framework for designing distributed algorithms with a priori performance guarantees that are near-optimal. We approach this problem from a game-theoretic perspective, assigning agents cost functions such that the equilibrium efficiency (price of anarchy) is optimized. Once agents' cost functions have been specified, any algorithm capable of computing a Nash equilibrium of the system inherits a performance guarantee matching the price of anarchy. Towards this goal, we formulate the problem of computing the price of anarchy as a tractable linear program. We then present a framework for designing agents' local cost functions in order to optimize for the worst-case equilibrium efficiency. Finally, we investigate the implications of our findings when this framework is applied to systems with convex, nondecreasing costs.Comment: 8 pages, double column, 1 figure, 2 tables, submitted to 2019 American Control Conferenc