Cooperative Charging in Residential Areas

Electric vehicles (EVs) require a well-developed charging infrastructure. Particularly when used for the daily commute, most EV drivers will rely on a nightly charge in their garage, for instance. In typical European urban residential areas, however, private parking and charging resources are severely limited. Therefore, public on-street charging often is the only option. However, it faces several limitations that lead to an inefficient and unfair utilization of charging stations, or EV supply equipment (EVSE). For instance, EVSEs are often blocked by fully charged vehicles. We thus propose and evaluate a cooperative protocol for EVs that facilitates coordinated handovers of EVSEs. We integrate this protocol with the ISO 15118 standard and provide a detailed security analysis. In the evaluation, we show that coordinated handovers significantly improve both EVSE utilization (helping to amortize the expensive operating costs) and provide benefits for EV owners by providing sufficient charging resources. This reduces range anxiety and saves them from cruising for charging.