Game Theoretic Approach for Electric Vehicles Charging Solution: A Study of the Interplay between Time, Price and Location

Abstract

Due to their potential in lowering gas emissions, the number of Electric Vehicles, which are eco-friendly, has rapidly increased in recent years and they have achieved immense popularity, creating a lot of interest in the industry and research. But, finding a Charging Station during critical low battery situations is a difficult time for Electric Vehicle users. In an Intelligent Transport System, the goal of each Electric Vehicles is to choose the Charging Station with the lowest cost by taking into account the location, charging rate, and other parameters whereas the goal of a Charging Station is to maximize its revenue by increasing its price based on the number of vehicles waiting in the Charging Station. We employ a multi-leader multi-follower Stackelberg game model to interplay between the Electric Vehicles and Charging Stations, in which location, waiting time, and price factor are considered as parameters. To find the best CS for EVs we formulate our own cost function by considering real-life parameters like the distance of the EV to the CS, waiting time at the station, time to charge the battery, price of unit charge, state of EV charging. The performance of the proposed approach is demonstrated by experiments with different EV densities, their need (units required to charge the battery), and preferences. The results are encouraging. © 2023 IEEE.