On the parking, charging and vehicle-to-grid choices of electric vehicles

Abstract

<p>The latent power storage capacity in electric vehicles (EVs) can provide additional flexibility to the power system, and thus helps enhance the overall efficiency, stability and reliability of the power grid. With the vehicle-to-grid (V2G) facility in place, EV users can choose to share their vehicles to the power grid as temporary storage while the vehicle is being parked or charged (termed as `V2G parking or charging service'). This study investigates the pricing and capacity decisions of parking, charging and V2G operators, subject to the EV users' choice equilibrium. The main findings are as follows. (i) Introducing the V2G-based parking/charging service might earn a positive profit for the V2G operator and also benefit customers who request for parking or charging, but the parking and charging operators will suffer a loss. (ii) The competition between operators tends to reduce the service fares, while cooperation tends to increase the fares and yield more profits for the operators. (iii) The optimal capacity of parking, charging, or V2G facilities should be set to balance the marginal capacity acquisition cost and the marginal facility searching time cost. (iv) When V2G operator cooperates with parking/charging operator, if the additional gains of parking/charging operator through cooperation are smaller than that of V2G operator, the optimal service fare of parking/charging should be smaller, and thus will benefit the parkers/chargers (after V2G service is introduced). (v) The collaboration between parking (or charging) and V2G operators might also benefit the charging (or parking) operator.<br></p>