Using Bluetooth Mesh to Enable Coordinate Charge of Domestic Charging Station for Electric Vehicles: An Experimental Analysis

Recent energy policies have favored the adoption of electric vehicles to replace internal combustion engines. However, the growing presence of electric vehicles causes Distribution System Operators (DSOs) to face ever-increasing challenges due to the ever-increasing demand for electricity for recharging electric vehicles. To address this issue, coordinated charging systems are becoming increasingly popular: a supervision system can control the amount of electricity supplied by a Charging Station (CS) for Electric Vehicle Supply (EV). Implementing this control scheme requires communication systems capable of allowing an appropriate exchange of information between all charging infrastructure's players. The goal of this research activity is to investigate the feasibility of using the recent Bluetooth Mesh protocol, which was developed for home automation applications, to allow information exchange between users, vehicles and supervisor with CS. When compared to traditional Bluetooth, the Mesh solution has the advantage of being infrastructure-less and optimized to reduce energy consumption (optimal for battery-powered systems). As a result, it represents a good compromise solution for allowing information exchange for the supervision of CS in domestic applications. The experimental characterization in laboratory revealed that the maximum end-to-end latency in a Bluetooth Mesh network (1 hop) is around 141 ms, which is completely compliant with application requirements.