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Authors
Abstract
The cooperative distributed smart charging technology employs concepts from nonlinear optimization and consensus
networks, to deal with the large scale demand management of PHEV/PEV charging, in a cooperative distributed
approach. In our design, each smart charger is a processing unit with peer-peer communication capability with other
smart chargers. Each smart charger mounts on a charging station and has control over the maximum output current of
the charging station either through limiting the output current or using PWM charge. It is also equipped with a battery
monitoring system, that provides the charging information such as State of Charge (SoC), terminal voltage and
charging current to the processor. Whenever a PHEV/PEV arrives and plugs in for charging, the smart charger asks
the user about his/her estimated time of stay, desired State of Charge when leaving the charging station and his/her
preference for cost of charging. Then, based on the user preferences, readings from the battery pack and coordination
signals from the neighbor units, the smart charger regulates the charging rate of the plugged in vehicle. The
cooperative behavior among the charging station and its neighbors, assures that the aggregate charging load is always
below a safety limit and the charging resources are allocated optimally among the charging stations. For instance, if a
vehicle leaves early and has a low SoC, gets higher charging rate than a vehicle that leaves late and has a higher SoC.
This cooperative behavior is achieved solely through local communication capabilities between a charging station and
its neighbors without the requirement for any control center. Therefore, the computational and communicational
burden is distributed throughout the network, which has the advantages of scalability and robustness to single
node/link failures.