Abstract

In the past decade, plug-in (hybrid) electric vehicles (PHEVs) have been widely proposed as a viable alternative to internal combustion vehicles to reduce fossil fuel emissions and dependence on petroleum. Off-peak vehicle charging is frequently proposed to reduce the stress on the electric power grid by shaping the load curve. Time of use (TOU) rates have been recommended to incentivize PHEV owners to shift their charging patterns. Many utilities are not currently equipped to provide real-time use rates to their customers but can provide two or three staggered rate levels. To date, an analysis of the optimal number of levels and rate-duration of TOU rates for a given consumer demographic versus utility generation mix has not been performed. In this paper, we propose to use the U.S. National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) database as a basis to analyze typical PHEV energy requirements. We use Monte Carlo methods to model the uncertainty inherent in battery state-of-charge and trip duration. We conclude the paper with an analysis of a different TOU rate schedule proposed by a mix of U.S. utilities. We introduce a centralized scheduling strategy for PHEV charging using a genetic algorithm to accommodate the size and complexity of the optimization. © 2014 by The Authors.

Department(s)

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Publication Status

Open Access

Comments

National Science Foundation, Grant 0835995

Keywords and Phrases

Economic dispatch; Electric vehicles; Energy management

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

1996-1073

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Final Version

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2024 The Authors, All rights reserved.

Creative Commons Licensing

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Publication Date

01 Jan 2014

Share

 
COinS