A Robust Multi-Stage Power Consumption Prediction Method in a Semi-Decentralized Network of Electric Vehicles

A Virtual Power Plant (VPP) balances the load on a power grid by allocating power generated by various interconnected units during periods of peak demand. In addition, demand-side energy devices such as Electric Vehicles (EVs) and mobile robots can also balance energy supply and demand when effectively deployed. However, the fluctuation of energy generated by renewable resources makes balancing energy supply a challenging goal. This paper proposes a semi-decentralized robust network of electric vehicles (NoEV) integration system for power management in a smart grid platform. The proposed approach integrates an aggregator with EV fleets into a blockchain framework. The EVs execute a multi-stage algorithm to predict the power consumption based on a novel federated learning algorithm named Federated Learning for Qualified Local Model Selection (FL-QLMS). From the evaluation results, the proposed system requires 35% fewer transactions in short intervals and propagation delays than the previous approaches and achieves better network efficiency while maintaining a high level of security. Moreover, NoEV achieves a 5.7% lower root mean square error (RMSE) than the conventional approach for power consumption prediction, which is a significant improvement. In addition, the FL-QLMS approach outperforms state-of-the-art methods in terms of robustness to client-side attacks. The evaluation results also show that the performance of FL-QLMS is not affected when 10% to 40% percent of the models are manipulated.