The role of behavioral heterogeneity in incentivizing the spatial-temporal flexibility of electric vehicle charging

Abstract Controlled electric vehicle (EV) charging has the potential to reduce grid investments while supporting the integration of renewable energy. We investigate how financial incentives affect EV charging load with the goal of leveraging its spatial-temporal flexibility to achieve this potential. While extant research primarily focuses on the technical aspects of controlled charging with uniform and idealized behavioral assumptions, we integrate heterogeneous user behavior, e.g., combining economically irrational with automated reactions to incentives. We develop an agent-based model to simulate charging loads at home, work, and public locations with spatially diverse scenarios of time-of-use tariffs, considering both an energy price component and a power-based capacity price component. Our results show that offering cheap workplace charging and extending time-of-use pricing to public charging locations might be most effective in shifting home charging in the evening to midday, particularly for EV users with limited reactions to financial incentives. To avoid rebound peaks, we find a strong potential across users with different behaviors to charge only at the cheapest opportunity using lower charging power.