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

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.Comment: Accepted for Publication in IEEE Transactions on Smart Gri

Charging Games in Networks of Electrical Vehicles

In this paper, a static non-cooperative game formulation of the problem of distributed charging in electrical vehicle (EV) networks is proposed. This formulation allows one to model the interaction between several EV which are connected to a common residential distribution transformer. Each EV aims at choosing the time at which it starts charging its battery in order to minimize an individual cost which is mainly related to the total power delivered by the transformer, the location of the time interval over which the charging operation is performed, and the charging duration needed for the considered EV to have its battery fully recharged. As individual cost functions are assumed to be memoryless, it is possible to show that the game of interest is always an ordinal potential game. More precisely, both an atomic and nonatomic versions of the charging game are considered. In both cases, equilibrium analysis is conducted. In particular, important issues such as equilibrium uniqueness and efficiency are tackled. Interestingly, both analytical and numerical results show that the efficiency loss due to decentralization (e.g., when cost functions such as distribution network Joule losses or life of residential distribution transformers when no thermal inertia is assumed) induced by charging is small and the corresponding "efficiency", a notion close to the Price of Anarchy, tends to one when the number of EV increases.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, keywords: Charging games - electrical vehicle - distribution networks - potential games - Nash equilibrium - price of anarch

Transforming Energy Networks via Peer to Peer Energy Trading: Potential of Game Theoretic Approaches

Peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading has emerged as a next-generation energy management mechanism for the smart grid that enables each prosumer of the network to participate in energy trading with one another and the grid. This poses a significant challenge in terms of modeling the decision-making process of each participant with conflicting interest and motivating prosumers to participate in energy trading and to cooperate, if necessary, for achieving different energy management goals. Therefore, such decision-making process needs to be built on solid mathematical and signal processing tools that can ensure an efficient operation of the smart grid. This paper provides an overview of the use of game theoretic approaches for P2P energy trading as a feasible and effective means of energy management. As such, we discuss various games and auction theoretic approaches by following a systematic classification to provide information on the importance of game theory for smart energy research. Then, the paper focuses on the P2P energy trading describing its key features and giving an introduction to an existing P2P testbed. Further, the paper zooms into the detail of some specific game and auction theoretic models that have recently been used in P2P energy trading and discusses some important finding of these schemes.Comment: 38 pages, single column, double spac