Blockchain and Zero‐Sum Game‐Based Energy Trading Scheme for Optimal <scp>EV</scp> Charging

ABSTRACT In recent years, the growth and popularity of electric vehicles (EVs) has soared owing to the facilitation of zero‐emission carbon for people commuting on the road, preserving the environment from air pollution and hazardous gases. However, uncertain EV energy demands and their dynamic arrival times impact the ancillary operations and stability of the charging station (CS). Thus, it becomes a challenging task to schedule EVs for charging with their dynamic charging prices, traveling time, and waiting time efficiently and optimally. Thus, we propose an optimal EV selection scheme for trustworthy charging by implementing the hybrid game theory. The hybrid game theory is bifurcated into stage 1 and stage 2, in which stage 1 includes a coalition game to generate EV clusters or coalitions based on the parameters of state‐of‐charge (SoC), energy demand, and penalty factor. Then, the trust values are determined to select the EV pair fairly. Furthermore, stage 2 highlights the zero‐sum game theory, which aims to optimize the payoff at saddle point and formulate strategies for EV pair (generated in stage 1), ensuring the optimal EV selection for trustworthy charging. Moreover, we have utilized the blockchain network to secure the EV optimal payoff by implementing smart contract in Remix Integrated Development Environment (IDE). The hybrid game theory ensures the optimal and efficient EV selection using coalition game to select EV pair then apply zero‐sum game to optimize the payoff at saddle point condition. Next, we implement the hybrid game theory in Python 3.9 to simulate the results with the help of various factors such as trust value comparison, profit comparison based on strategies, convergence comparison, and profit comparison with the traditional approach.