A decentralized optimization approach to the power management of electric vehicles parking lots

To reduce the transportation sector's environmental impact, a transition to electric mobility is being witnessed worldwide. However, to avoid any issues on the grid, the charging process of electric vehicles (EVs) must be carefully managed. One valid solution to this problem is aggregating EVs and managing their collective charge and discharge. Parking lots equipped with charging stations are likely to become more prevalent in the future. Careful management of such infrastructures is essential to avoid local overloads and to provide flexibility to the electrical grid. In this context, this paper formalizes an optimization model for the optimal power management of a smart PL, with the objective of minimizing the power withdrawn from the grid while considering customers’ needs. The main novelties regard how the PL is modeled and how the solution to the optimization problem is achieved. In fact, as far as the modeling is concerned, both single- and three-phase EVs are considered, and batteries are modeled via a non-linear charging profile. As regards the solution method, an augmented Lagrangian-based decentralized model predictive control technique is proposed. The adopted algorithm has been tested on a smart PL in a Genova Municipality (Italy) and its performance has been evaluated by implementing two different scenarios: in the first one only 5 EVs are considered, while the second one regards a scalability analysis where the number of served EVs is increased to 40. The conducted tests confirm that the proposed algorithm can provide a computationally efficient solution, while preserving an accurate model.