Smart Electric Vehicle Charging considering Discounts for Customer Flexibility

The expansion of large-scale charging infrastructure is crucial to cope with growing shares of electric vehicles. However, operators often struggle with profitable operation due to volatile occupancy and high costs for peaks in charging demand. Using information and communication technology may enable smart charging and thereby profitable operation by addressing the challenge of costly peak demand but requires customer flexibility to shift and manage charging processes. Therefore, operators must offer discounts on charging prices for customers to provide flexibility, which in turn mark an additional cost. Here we provide a model to analyze whether the costs to allocate flexibility exceed cost savings through smart charging. The model is evaluated in a case study of a large-scale charging park with real-world data on highway traffic and charging station usage. The results indicate that smart charging can provide net benefits even if operators are required to offer discounts for charging flexibility

Putting our money where their mouth is: alignment of charitable aims with charity investments - tensions in policy and practice

Given the values-driven nature of the mission of most charities, it might be expected that investment behaviour would be similarly values-driven. This paper documents the ethical investment policies and practices of the largest UK charities and explores how these are aligned with the charitable aims, drawing upon accountability, behavioural and managerial perspectives as theoretical lenses. The study employs two distinct research methods: responses to a postal questionnaire and follow-up semi-structured interviews with selected charities. The evidence indicates that a significant minority of large charities do not have a written ethical investment policy. Charities with larger investments, fundraising charities and religious charities were more likely to have a written ethical policy. We suggest that there is a pressing need for improved alignment between charities' aims and their investment practices and better monitoring of investment policies