Combinatorial Optimization of Electric Vehicle Charging in AC Power Distribution Networks

Abstract

This paper studies the scheduling optimization problem of electric vehicle (EV) charging considering two salient characteristics: (1) discrete charging rates with minimum power requirements in common EV charging standards, and (2) nodal voltage and line capacity constraints of alternating current (AC) power flows in electricity distribution networks. We present approximation algorithms to solve scheduling optimization problem of EV charging, which have a provably small parameterized approximation ratio. Simulations show our algorithms can produce close-to-optimal solutions in practice.