A Revenue Management Approach for Efficient Electric Vehicle Charging Coordination

Ambitious goals of electric vehicle (EV) penetration may conflict with the capabilities of today's power system. Especially simultaneous charging at home may lead to significant load spikes or grid stability issues. Prior research has identified the need for appropriate coordination approaches. This research focuses mostly on coordinating system loads ignoring local grid constraints. The suggested mechanisms either are centralized control approaches ignoring user preferences or based on the electrical energy cost. We propose to complement these approaches by using mechanisms from revenue management for perishable assets. First, we formalize charging coordination as a minimal revenue management problem and then derive an appropriate advance sale mechanism. By accounting for heterogeneous customer segments, this approach can achieve a socially efficient allocation of available charging capacity. Using a local neighborhood scenario, we evaluate the impact of such an approach.