Mechanism design for efficient allocation of electric vehicles to charging stations

The electrification of transport can significantly reduce CO2 emissions and their negative impact on the environment. In this paper, we study the problem of allocating Electric Vehicles (EVs) to charging stations and scheduling their charging. We develop an offline solution that treats EV users as self-interested agents that aim to maximise their profit and minimise the impact on their schedule. We formulate the problem of the optimal EV to charging station allocation as a Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) one and we propose two pricing mechanisms: A fixed-price one, and another that is based on the well known Vickrey-Clark-Groves (VCG) mechanism. We observe that the VCG mechanism services on average 1.5% more EVs than the fixed-price one. In addition, when the stations get congested, VCG leads to higher prices for the EVs and higher profit for the stations, but lower utility for the EVs. However, the VCG mechanism guarantees truthful reporting of the EVs’ preferences.