Congestion control in charging of electric vehicles

Rui Carvalho, Lubos Buzna, Richard Gibbens, Frank Kelly

Published 2015-01-28Version 1

The increasing penetration of electric vehicles over the coming decades, taken together with the high cost to upgrade local distribution networks, and consumer demand for home charging, suggest that managing congestion on low voltage networks will be a crucial component of the electric vehicle revolution and the move away from fossil fuels in transportation. Here, we model the max-flow and proportional fairness protocols for the control of congestion caused by a fleet of vehicles charging on distribution networks. We analyse the inequality in the charging times as the vehicle arrival rate increases, and show that charging times are considerably more uneven in max-flow than in proportional fairness. We also analyse the onset of instability, and find that the critical arrival rate is indistinguishable between the two protocols.