Smarter charging: Power allocation accounting for travel time of electric vehicle drivers

Growing electric vehicle (EV) dissemination will increase charging infrastructure installation at home. Similar daily routines are associated with high peak loads due to simultaneous EV charging. However, predominantly residential power transmission is not designed for such high loads, yielding charging bottlenecks and restricting future charging at home. Addressing such bottleneck situations and including the EV driver perspective, we introduce a power allocation mechanism that considers the total travel time of the upcoming trip, consisting of actual driving time and time required for charging externally (including the detour to public charging facilities). Assuming that travel time generally negatively correlates with EV driver utility, our optimization model maximizes the resulting utility of EV drivers. Avoiding unnecessary external charging stops due to an insufficient state of charge at the time of departure, our approach generates travel time savings that increase overall EV driver utility. We illustrate our approach using exemplary cases.