Managing parking and charging services for electric autonomous vehicles considering vehicle-to-grid facilities

Abstract

Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) is an advanced technology that enables the transmission of energy from the battery of an electric vehicle to the grid, which provides opportunities to utilize electric autonomous vehicles (EAVs) as temporary storage for excessive energy. In the presence of V2G facilities, this paper formulates the joint choice equilibrium of parking and charging services and travel routes for users who need to park or charge their EAVs. Specifically, we consider that users who need to park (charge) their EAVs can choose either conventional parking (charging) service or V2G parking (charging) service, where V2G parking or charging service means that the EAV will be used for temporal power storage during parking or charging. The joint choice equilibrium is modeled as a variational inequality problem and the solution uniqueness/non-uniqueness issues of the equilibrium model have been examined. Considering the user choice equilibrium, we further investigate the optimal operation strategies of parking, charging and V2G operators, where these three operators might compete/cooperate with each other to maximize their benefits. Solution approaches for solving both the equilibrium model and the optimization model are proposed. Numerical studies demonstrated the proposed method and generated insights on how to manage/operate parking and charging services after integrating V2G facilities.