ChatEV: Predicting electric vehicle charging demand as natural language processing

The increasing popularity of electric vehicles (EVs) in recent times has introduced considerable load conditions for urban power grids and transportation systems, which highlights the importance of accurately predicting charging demand to enhance charging efficiency. However, current forecasting methods still face challenges in effectively aligning diverse data and generating accurate predictions that can be applied to unseen scenarios. To overcome the challenges, this work introduces a novel perspective: employing large language models (LLMs) as EV charging demand predictors. First, we reformulate the prediction task into a text-to-text format, enabling seamless and effective alignment of various features within a unified language semantic space. Subsequently, we fine-tune a LLM using a meta-learning framework to adapt it specifically for EV charging prediction. Through comprehensive evaluations, it has been demonstrated that the proposed model, ChatEV, achieves outstanding performance in EV charging demand forecasting, particularly in scenarios with limited data.