Optimization Techniques in Electric Vehicle Charging Scheduling, Routing and Spatio-Temporal Demand Coordination: A Systematic Review

Abstract

The growing penetration of electric vehicles (EVs) and the increasing EV energy demand pose several challenges to the power grid, the power distribution networks and the transportation networks. This growing demand drives the need for effective demand management and energy coordination strategies to maximize the demand covered by the EV charging stations, ensure EV users' satisfaction and prevent grid-side overload. As a result, several optimization problems are formulated and solved in the literature to provide optimal EV charging schedules (i.e. temporal coordination) as well as optimal EV-to-charging-station assignments and routing plans (i.e. spatial coordination). This paper presents a review of the state-of-the-art literature on the utilization of different deterministic optimization techniques to develop optimal EV charging coordination strategies. In particular, these works are reviewed according to their domains of operation (i.e. time-based scheduling, spatial coordination, and spatio-temporal charging coordination), their respective objectives (user-, grid- and operator-related objectives), and the solution algorithms adopted to provide the corresponding optimal coordination plans. This helps in identifying key research gaps and provide recommendations for future research directions to develop comprehensive and computationally efficient charging coordination models.