Online Pricing Mechanism for Electric Vehicles Charging Based on Operational Condition of A Charging Station

The cost and stability, in terms of stable charging load, are the main concerns of a charging station (CS). To this end, an online cost optimization algorithm is proposed by assuming that all electric vehicle (EV) users are selfless, so that they will report a real demand to the CS. However, in reality, all EV users are rational and they want to complete the energy demand in the fastest time and the lowest cost. Therefore, inspired by this characteristic of EV users, an online pricing mechanism is designed based on the online algorithm. There are three-fold benefits of the proposed pricing mechanism: giving discount to the flexibility of EV users, ensuring fairness among EV users and the individual optimal strategies of EV users jointly achieve minimizing cost of the CS. Numerical results based on real data further verify the effectiveness of the proposed online algorithm and the pricing mechanism.