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