Potential benefits of scheduling electric vehicle sessions over limiting charging power

Abstract

This work addresses the management of charging infrastructure to cope with the problem of congestion in the electric grid by exploiting electric vehicle (EV) flexibility. Benefits of scheduling charging sessions based on user profiles is compared with two traditional methods for limiting charging power: using static a dynamic control signal. The user profile concept is a classification strategy that consists in assigning a label to every EV user, referring to a connection pattern in the daily use of the charging infrastructure. The study analyses pros and cons of these three approaches and highlight the advantages of demand-response programs based on the user profiles. Thus, while limiting the power of charging sessions with a static signal causes a rebound effect, using a dynamic signal requires impacting a high amount of sessions. Scheduling (i.e. postponing) the charging sessions associated to profiles with low-variance provides a higher efficiency of the demand-response program since the same objective (i.e. peak demand reduction to 350 kW) is achieved with a lower number of participating sessions (40% fewer than limiting charging power with dynamic signal).