Decentralized Charging Coordination of Large-Population PEVs Under a Hierarchical Structure

Centralized or decentralized charging schedules of large-scale PEVs coordinated by a system operator usually require significant management, computation and communication capabilities on the system. Alternatively in this chapter, it constructs a hierarchical model for the PEV charging coordination problems where a collection of agents are introduced between the system operator and individual vehicles, and proposes an off-line decentralized method for the constructed hierarchical optimization problems. Under the decentralized method, each PEV implements its best behavior with respect to a given local charging price curve set by its agent. Each agent submits the collected aggregated charging behaviors under this agent to the system operator who then updates the electricity generation price and broadcasts it to PEVs via agents. To reimburse the transaction operation costs on agents, the charging price on the PEVs under an agent comprises both the generation price broadcasted from the system operator and the operation price set by this agent. It is shown that, under certain conditions, the proposed dynamical procedure converges to the efficient (or socially optimal) solution. The proposed method under the hierarchical structure presents the advantage of the autonomy of the individual PEVs and the low computation and communication capability requirements on the system.