Local Peak Shaving for Electric Vehicles: A ready-to-deploy Smart Charging Solution

Driven by governmental policies, particularly in Europe, Electric Vehicles (EVs) are gradually replacing the current fleet. Since they are only used during a small portion of the time for transportation, their batteries can be used for other purposes during the rest of the time. The power grid constantly requires to maintain the balance between electricity production and consumption. Controlling the charge of EVs can avoid the need to invest in grid reinforcement. This research work focuses on flattening the consumption in residential areas, also known as peak shaving, which reduces the need for reactive power plants on the grid. Existing solutions often rely on coordination among vehicles, meaning that they require a communication network between the various consumers in the area (e.g., vehicles, houses). However, such a dedicated communication network is not yet deployed in practice. It would be costly to deploy and operate, and could potentially constitute a privacy breach for consumers. In this paper, we propose a local smart charging solution only relying on information exchanges between each house’s smart-meter and its EV’s charging station. We compare our local peak shaving to solutions without communication infrastructure, and to an optimal theoretical solution provided by a linear programming solver. Simulation campaign show that our local peak shaving algorithm offers a solution close to the optimum, with advantages in terms of voltage stability, fairness among users and vehicle battery lifetime preservation.