When smart grid meets PHEVs: a smart load distribution mechanism in smart grid

Along with the increasing popularity of electric vehicles caused by economic and environmental incentives, the penetration of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) poses a great threat to the power grid, especially to the aggregated load in the power system. Motivated by this observation, in this paper, we analyze the impact of large-scale usage of PHEVs and address the load distribution problem by solving a decentralized optimization problem and smoothening the peak load with pricing strategies in the power grid. We also investigate the influence of charging time and charging mode on load distribution, as the charging price varies with the changes of these two factors. Our simulation study on PJM's data warehouse shows that the proposed strategies can well smooth the peak load by pricing on the charging time and mode. The results also indicate that our strategies always distribute the load in a smoother manner at a smaller load fluctuation compared with other schemes (e.g., First Come First Service and PMCS) and thus improving the stability and reliability of the power grid.