Riccardo Ramaschi

Riccardo Ramaschi, Mario Paolone, Sonia Leva

In the first part of this two-part paper a game-theoretic decentralized real-time control is proposed in the context of Electric Vehicle (EV) Charging Station (CS). This method, relying on a Stackelberg Game-based Alternating Direction of Multipliers (SG-ADMM), intends to steer the EVs' individual objectives towards the CS optimum by means of an incentive design mechanism, while controlling the EV power dispatch in a distributed manner. We integrate SG-ADMM in a hierachical multi-layered Energy Management System (EMS) as the real-time control algorithm, formulating the two-layer approach so that the SG leader (i.e., the CS), holding commitment power, trades off the available power with the incentives to the EVs, and the SG followers (i.e., the EVs) optimizes their charging curve in response to the leader decision. In this second part, we demonstrate the applicability of SG-ADMM as a incentive design mechanism inside an EVCS EMS, testing it in a large-scale EVCS. We benchmark this method with a decentralized (ADMM-based), a centralized and a uncontrolled approach, showing that our method exploits EV-level flexibility in a cost-effective, fair and computationally efficient manner.

Riccardo Ramaschi, Mario Paolone, Sonia Leva

Large-scale Electric Vehicle (EV) Charging Station (CS) may be too large to be dispatched in real-time via a centralized approach. While a decentralized approach may be a viable solution, the lack of incentives could impair the alignment of EVs' individual objectives with the controller's optimum. In this work, we integrate a decentralized algorithm into a hierarchical three-layer Energy Management System (EMS), where it operates as the real-time control layer and incorporates an incentive design mechanism. A centralized approach is proposed for the dispatch plan definition and for the intra-day refinement, while a decentralized game-theoretic approach is proposed for the real time control. We employ a Stackelberg Game-based Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (SG-ADMM) to simultaneously design an incentive mechanism while managing the EV control in a distributed manner, while framing the leadership-followership relation between the EVCS and the EVs as a non-cooperative game where the leader has commitment power. Part I of this two-part paper deals with the SG-ADMM approach description, literature review and integration in the abovementioned hierarchical EMS, focusing on the modifications needed for the proposed application.

Riccardo Ramaschi, Mario Paolone, Sonia Leva

Electric Vehicle (EV) fast charging stations require forecasting techniques both at the single charger level and aggregated level. While for the latter several models exist, forecasting individual EV charging profiles is still underexplored in literature. However, such methods may be potentially used by battery-aware scheduling, leading to a more granular update of the charging station aggregated forecast and provide a more accurate estimation of EVs departure times. Nonetheless, the variable extent of available information in time and in different settings could jeopardize these benefits. For this reason, we propose a hybrid and lightweight method to estimate the EV charging profile before and during the charging process. Besides evaluating this method on multiple EVs from a public dataset, we also assess the impact of different level of information in the time transposition of the charging profile.