Performance Evaluation of an EDA-Based Large-Scale Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle Charging Algorithm

The anticipation of a large penetration of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) into the market brings up many technical problems that need to be addressed. In the near future, a large number of PHEVs in our society will add a large-scale energy load to our power grids, as well as add substantial energy resources that can be utilized. An emerging issue is that a large number of PHEVs simultaneously connected to the grid may pose a huge threat to the overall power system quality and stability. In this paper, the authors propose an algorithm for optimally managing a large number of PHEVs (e.g., 3000) charging at a municipal parking station. The authors used the estimation of distribution algorithm (EDA) to intelligently allocate electrical energy to the PHEVs connected to the grid. A mathematical framework for the objective function (i.e., maximizing the average state-of-charge at the next time step) is also given. The authors considered real-world constraints such as energy price, remaining battery capacity, and remaining charging time. The authors also simulated the real-world parking deck scenarios according to the statistical analysis based on the transportation data. The authors characterized the performance of EDA using a Matlab simulation, and compared it with other optimization techniques.