IEEE SmartGridComm 2013 Symposium - Demand Side Management, Demand Response, Dynamic Pricing
Design of a V2G Aggregator to Optimize PHEV
Charging and Frequency Regulation Control
Ran Wang, Yifan Li, Ping Wang and Dusit Niyato
School of Computer Engineering
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Abstract—The key elements in an indirect V2G system archi-
tecture are aggregators. They act as an interface between the
grid and a group of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). In
this paper, we design an optimal vehicle to grid (V2G) aggregator
to control the charging and frequency regulation processes of a
group of PHEVs. We consider a problem that an aggregator has
to minimize the overall cost of PHEV fleet in a multiple time
slot horizon and meet the required battery level when PHEVs
plug out. We adopt summation of PHEVs’ expenditure in a
finite number of time slots as our objective function, which is
a quadratic optimization problem. A model predictive control
based (MPC-based) PHEV charging and regulation algorithm
is proposed to schedule the charging and regulation processes.
Through the numerical experiments, we obtain the optimal
charging and frequency regulation sequences for each PHEV,
the effect of price prediction error on PHEV’s cost as well as the
impact of penalty factor to plug-out State of Charge (SOC). It
is also shown that by taking the optimal control sequences, the
PHEV owner can reduce his cost and depart with desired SOC.
I. I NTRODUCTION
The widespread use of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles
(PHEVs) over the next few decades will result in a great
number of benefits to the electric power industry. In USA,
the goal has been set to achieve a penetration of 1 million
PHEVs by 2015 [1]. The new plug-in concept is enabling
the utilization of vehicle batteries for grid-side benefit, which
is referred to as Vehicle-to-Grid or V2G [2]. Utilizing the
V2G technology, the PHEV will be able to feed power into
the grid and the PHEV users can earn revenues. Specially,
the V2G system can help to regulate the frequency in a
power system. Unbalanced active power will lead to the
current frequency variation in the power grid. Currently, such
regulation is achieved mainly by increasing fast response
generators, which are very costly. Alternatively, PHEVs can
help by charging their batteries and increase their load demand
when the frequency is too high. While on the contrary, if the
frequency is too low, by terminating charging or discharging
a number of PHEVs, the adjustment can be done [3].
There are two types of V2G system architecture, i.e.,
direct and indirect architecture. In the direct architecture,
there exists a direct line of communication between the grid
system operator and the vehicle, so that each vehicle can
be treated as a deterministic resource to be commanded by
the grid system operator. In this case, as the operator needs
to directly interact with millions of individual PHEVs, the
amount of signals and control tasks on the grid operator will be
overwhelming. In addition, geographically distributed nature
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of vehicles and their limited individual storage capacity make
the direct architecture impractical in the existing contracting
framework (e.g., with minimum 1 MW threshold for ancillary
services hourly contracts) [3]. The alternative indirect V2G
system architecture involves several aggregators. In this regard,
each aggregator aggregates the services provided by individual
PHEVs to make a single controllable power resource. The
aggregator is an intermediate interface between the vehicles
and the grid operator [3].
Due to advancement of the power storage technology,
PHEVs’ battery capacity can range from 16 kWh to 53 kWh
and the frequency regulation is performed on the MW basis
in most electricity market [4], [5]. Therefore, an aggregator is
necessary to deal with hundreds to thousands of vehicles while
simultaneously providing the regulation service on large-scale
power delivery [3].
In general, an aggregator may take two roles in the V2G
system. With regard to PHEVs, the aggregator represents the
grid operator, trying to coordinate charging and regulation
processes to fulfill charging the batteries for PHEV owners
while maximizing the overall revenue of providing services.
For a grid system operator, the aggregator represents agent of
PHEVs, regarded as a dedicated regulation provider and elec-
tricity consumer. Therefore, designing an efficient aggretator is
challenging, due to the fact that the conditions of each vehicle
including current state of charge (SOC), expected parking time
and expected plug-out battery level differ from each other.
Thus, it is necessary to propose an efficient V2G operation
method that provides the frequency regulation service in an
optimal way while charging each vehicle to a satisfactory SOC
level before departure.
For V2G aggregator design problems, a few related works
can be found in the recent literature. [6] presents a set of
schemes to distribute the power for V2G regulation service
when this service is provided by electric vehicles (EVs)
managed by an aggregator. The focus of this paper is on
the fair distribution of power among the EVs. [5] and [7]
investigate the charging and regulation optimization problem
from the perspective of a single vehicle. They propose that
the regulation signal has a zero mean distribution and the
frequency regulation itself does not affect the change of SOC
under this circumstance. [8] introduces a discrete dispatch
algorithm for EVs performing frequency regulation. This
algorithm switches EVs on and off to meet the aggregators
total regulation dispatch required based on each EV’s charging
 IEEE SmartGridComm 2013 Symposium - Demand Side Management, Demand Response, Dynamic Pricing
"
"
"
!
!
Fig. 1: System architecture.
priority. [9] studies the problem of stimulating self-interested
EVs in providing ancillary services to the power grid.
In this paper, we propose a new scheme from the perspective
of an aggregator for organizing the charging and frequency
regulation processes for PHEVs. We consider the problem
that an aggregator has to optimally schedule the charging and
regulation processes of a group of PHEVs to minimize the
cost, and at the same time meet the required battery level when
each PHEV plugs out. The main challenge of this problem
is that the number of PHEVs in the system is dynamic and
aggretator does not know when a new vehicle will arrive. To
solve this problem, a model predictive control based (MPC-
based) PHEV charging and regulation algorithm is proposed to
schedule the charging and regulation processes. The aggregator
will plan charging and regulation sequences at the beginning
of each time slot by solving the quadratic programming
problem. Numerical results demonstrate the optimal charging
and regulation sequences of the vehicles. We also present the
impact of price prediction error and compare the cost for
utilizing and not utilizing the optimal charging result.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section II
presents the system overview (e.g., V2G charging and fre-
quency regulation) and system model under our consideration.
The problem formulation and model predictive control (MPC)-
based algorithm is discussed in Section III. Section IV gives
the performance evaluation and analysis. Finally, conclusions
are drawn in Section V.
II. S YSTEM OVERVIEW
A. Roles and Operations of Aggregator
An aggregator should be able to provide the frequency
regulation service for the grid operator in a desired scale
by organizing the PHEVs rationally [5]. In this case, the
vehicle cannot discharge by itself, but only regulation up is
commanded from the grid operator [7]. The architecture of the
system is simplified as shown in Fig. 1. We can simply observe
that the aggregator acts as an interface between vehicles and
grid operator. The process of the system works as follows.
First, the aggregator will make a contract with each PHEV
for using its battery based on the current state of the vehicle.
The PHEV will announce to the aggregator its current SOC,
128
expected departure time, battery capacity, charging rate and
some other parameters. The prerequisite for PHEV owners to
participate in this activity is that their vehicles are charged to a
satisfactory level at the plug-out time. Other incentives include
direct payment, credit points or battery maintenance. However,
if the driver does not follow the contract, which means that he
drives away before the pre-notified departure time, he has to
accept the fact that the battery may not be charged enough at
the plug-out time. However, in practice, since the aggregator
will have contract with hundreds to thousands of vehicles, the
proportion of unexpected departure will be a constant. The
studies have shown that under such a condition, the early
departure is negligible in the regulation process [5]. Then, the
aggregator will make another contract with the grid operator
on how much regulation capacity that the aggregator can
provide to the power grid. Alternatively, the aggregator may
report the amount of power that it needs from the grid operator
for charging vehicles. Note that the regulation contract size
should not exceed the total available capacity of a PHEV fleet.
Once these contracts are established, the aggregator can be
regarded as a dedicated energy consumer and service provider
for grid operator, which simplifies the control task of the grid
operator significantly.
B. System Model
In this paper, the intended time cycle for the operation of
the aggregator is divided into H time slots, where H = |H|,
and H is the set of all time slots. An adaptive pricing scheme
is considered where the exact price values (charging price,
regulation up price and regulation down price) for each time
slot are calculated in real time and are announced only at the
beginning of each operation period. For the next H − 1 time
slots, we are only aware of the predicted prices (H is also
the price prediction horizon). The goal of the aggregator is
to optimize charging and regulation processes to satisfy the
charging requirements of PHEV owners and simultaneously
minimize the total expenses of the PHEV fleet. For the
charging process, the PHEV should pay to the power grid due
to buying energy, whereas for regulation up (discharging) and
regulation down (charging), PHEV can earn revenue. Note that
even though charging and regulation down are physically the
same for the PHEV battery, they have different intentions. For
the charging process, PHEVs are energy consumers. However,
for the regulation down, PHEVs are service providers.
The aggregator control scheme works as follows. In a time
slot, each vehicle has three states, i.e., idle, charging and
regulation. The operation period of the PHEV is the period
in which vehicle charges its battery or provides regulation
service for the power grid (in charging or regulation state,
respectively). Since we divide the time into multiple time
slots, we define the operation period of PHEV as the set of
continuous time slots that fall between the arrival time and
departure time. Without loss of generality, we assume that at
each time slot, the cost of buying electricity is proportional
to the energy amount. However, the revenue due to providing
frequency regulation service is proportional to the available
 IEEE SmartGridComm 2013 Symposium - Demand Side Management, Demand Response, Dynamic Pricing

energy capacity. This is because the fluctuation of power fn charging time needed for PHEV n to fill the gap
changes between positive and negative is almost evenly dis- between the initial SOC and desired plug-out SOC
tributed. Also, the amount of frequency regulation is expected α penalty factor for not charging the vehicle to the
to have a zero mean distribution. Thus, frequency regulation desired SOC
will not affect the SOC of the battery in a long period. It xmax
n maximum permitted battery level of vehicle n
is also important to note that what the PHEVs provide is xmin
n minimum permitted battery level of vehicle n.
the regulation capacity, not the truly charging (discharging) βn the plug-out time slot of PHEV n.
H
energy. Therefore, intuitively, the aggretator should allow the CN and RH N are the matrices of cn (h) and rn (h) for n =
vehicles to charge when the electricity price is low and to join 1, . . . , N and h = 1, . . . , H, respectively (i.e., matrices of
the regulation service when the regulation price is high. decision variables).
For the objective function defined in (1), the first two terms
III. P ROBLEM F ORMULATION AND MPC-BASED
denote the sum of charging expenses of all the vehicles during
C HARGING AND R EGULATION A LGORITHM
time horizon H. qn is a constant representing the maximum
A. Objective Function and Constraints charging rate of PHEV n. The third and fourth terms denote
The aim of the proposed algorithm is to find an optimal the revenue obtained from providing frequency regulation ser-
vehicle charging and regulation control schedule to satisfy vices. Here, the frequency regulation revenue is proportional
PHEV plug-out battery level and minimize the cost of the to the effective capacity of the battery. The reason is that the
whole fleet over H time slots. Thus, we propose the following regulation up and regulation down signals are fairly distributed
quadratic optimization formulation: with zero mean distribution. The goal of frequency regulation
  is to balance the generator supply with user consumption.
X In this case, PHEVs provide a battery capacity instead of
min pc (k)  cn (k)qn  (1) real energy. Also notice that the vehicle’s SOC will affect
H ,RH
CN N
n∈N (k) the regulation up and regulation down capacities. However,
 
H+k−1
X X it is unnecessary to separate regulation up and regulation
+ p̂c (h)  cn (h)qn  down processes. The probabilities of having regulation up
h=k+1 n∈N (k) and regulation down signals are all closely equal to 0.5. The
X regulation down capacity is xmax − xn (h) and regulation up
xmax − xmin

n
−pr (k) rn (k)
n n
capacity is xn (h) − xmin
n , where xn (h) is vehicle n’s SOC at
n∈N (k)
time slot h. Thus, the total regulation capacity is in fact equal
H+k−1
X X to the effective battery capacity.
p̂r (h) xmax − xmin


− n n rn (h)
The last term is the total penalty cost due to failing
h=k+1 n∈N (k)
!β #2 to achieve the desired battery level. The penalty factor α
X X n
represents the significance for vehicles to achieve the desirable
+ α cn (h) − fn battery level when vehicle departs. Without loss of generality,
n∈N (k) h=k we assume that all vehicles have the same penalty factor. fn
s.t. 0 ≤ cn (h) ≤ 1 (2) is equal to the battery gap divided by the charging rate, which
0 ≤ rn (h) ≤ 1 (3) the aggregator can obtain at the beginning of each time slot.
If we use xdn to denote the desired plug-out battery level of
cn (h) + rn (h) = 1 if h ≤ βn (4)
PHEV n and xin to denote the initial battery level, then we
cn (h) = 0, if h > βn (5) have
rn (h) = 0, if h > βn (6) xdn − xin
fn = . (7)
where: qn
k current time slot cn (h) and rn (h) are decision variables representing the pro-
h time index, e.g., hour portion of time that PHEV n is charging and regulating during
N set of PHEVs time slot h. For instance, cn (h) = 0.6 and rn (h) = 0.4
H set of time slots, H = [k, k + 1, . . . , k + H − 1] indicate that 40% of the whole time slot is used for charging
pc (k) charging price at time slot k and the remaining 60% is used for regulation. Thus, it is
p̂c (h) predicted charging price at time slot h obvious that cn (h) and rn (h) should vary within the range
pr (k) regulation price at time slot k between 0 and 1. Note that charging and frequency regulation
p̂r (h) predicted regulation price at time slot h are two processes that have totally different purposes, and
qn maximum charging rate of PHEV n they cannot happen simultaneously. We assume that during
cn (h) charging control parameter, denoting the proportion the controlled time slots, PHEVs will either charge or regulate
of time that PHEV n charges during time slot h for the grid operator within one time slot, which is captured
rn (h) regulation control parameter, denoting the proportion in the constraint defined in (4). Obviously, with the aim of
of time that PHEV n regulates during time slot h maximizing revenues, PHEVs want to regulate as long as they

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 IEEE SmartGridComm 2013 Symposium - Demand Side Management, Demand Response, Dynamic Pricing
do not need to charge. Also, it is unnecessary to consider the
order of charging and regulation, since charging and regulation
prices remain the same within a time slot. We can assume that
in a time slot, PHEVs will first charge and then regulate for the
power grid. (5) and (6) indicate that after the PHEV departs,
the aggregator would stop controlling the vehicle. Thus we set
cn and rn equal to 0 after time slot βn .
Also, the aggretator has to ensure that the desired battery
level should not exceed the maximum charging capacity of
vehicle during its parking period. In other words, if the vehicle
is charging during the entire parking period, it can definitely
reach the pre-set desired battery level, which can be expressed
as follows:
β n − k ≥ fn . (8)
By solving the above optimization problem expressed in
(1)-(8), we can obtain the optimal charging and regulation
decisions of the system for the entire H time slots. Unfor-
tunately, due to vehicle arrival and departure, the system is
dynamic and the number of vehicles and their parameters will
change over time. It is impossible for the aggregator to make
a stationary long term schedule sequence for all time slots.
Also, the aggregator cannot greedily make a decision for a
single time slot because the plug-out SOC constraint is for
the whole plug-in duration.
To address the above conditions, we propose the model
predictive control (MPC)-based charging and regulation algo-
rithm.
B. MPC-Based Charging and Regulation Algorithm
The basic idea of the MPC is that a finite horizon opti-
mization problem determining the series of optimal control
operation is solved but only the first step of control sequence
is actually implemented [10] [11]. The state variables over
the prediction horizon are described by a predictive model,
with the initial state being the measured state of the actual
system. After the first step of control sequence is applied, the
actual state of the system will be updated and observed. Also,
the future states will be predicted [11]. Then, with the new
observation of system states, the optimization problem will
be solved again. In this paper, the predicted variables are the
charging and regulation prices for the upcoming H − 1 time
slots. Note that since the focus of this paper is to design the
optimal charging and regulation processes, the predicted states
are assumed to be available, in which any prediction methods
can be applied.
With the MPC, a charging and regulation scheduling algo-
rithm can be expressed as follows:
(I) Set k = 0.
(II) Select the time horizon H (e.g., 6 or 12 hours), the
length of each time slot (e.g., 1 hour). Select prediction
model for charging and regulation prices.
(III) Obtain the current vehicles’ information (e.g. current
SOC, expected departure time, battery capacity, and
charging rate).
130
0.32
Charging Prices /S$
0.3
0.28
0.26
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
−3
Time slots index
x 10
15
Regulation Prices /S$
10
5
0
−5
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Time slots index
Fig. 2: Charging and regulation prices.
(IV) Solve the quadratic programming optimization problem
(1) constrained by (2) ∼ (8) for the entire time horizon.
H
Solve for the solution matrices, i.e., CN and RHN , which
give an optimal operation schedule from time slot k to
time slot k + H.
(V) Apply the optimal solutions cn (k) and rn (k), for n =
k
1, . . . , N , which is from the matrices CN and RkN ,
respectively.
(VI) Set k = k + 1. Update the predicted model for the next
iteration. Update the current vehicles’ information. Go
to Step IV.
The above MPC-based charging and regulation algorithm
shows the following advantages:
• The optimization solving is efficient, fast and easy to im-
plement, the time complexity of the algorithm is O(n3 ).
• Short-term price prediction is much more precise than
the long-term one. The most updated price information
could be effectively used in the schedule decision making
process to minimize the overall cost.
• The case that vehicles may join and leave the system
is considered. Vehicles’ information could be updated
quickly and each vehicle will be guaranteed to get a
satisfactory charging level when it departs.
Note that the control sequences that we obtained may not
be the truly optimal schedule. The reason is that the control
sequence obtained from the algorithm is optimal given the
current system state and the predicted prices at the decision
making time slot. However, the system is dynamic and predic-
tion error exists. As a result, the control sequence may not be
truly optimal. The truly optimal decision can only be obtained
after the whole time horizon ends (when we can look back).
Therefore, the control sequence obtained from the proposed
algorithm is the most practical given the available state and
vehicle information, which from the evaluation, yields the
good performance.
IV. P ERFORMANCE E VALUATION AND A NALYSIS
In the experiment, we consider a case of 800 vehicles to
be scheduled at the beginning of the time slot. This fits the
requirements that the aggregator should have contracts with
hundreds to thousands of vehicles and frequency regulation
should be carried out at least on the M W basis. When new
 IEEE SmartGridComm 2013 Symposium - Demand Side Management, Demand Response, Dynamic Pricing
Charing result for vehicle 735 at each time slot
1
0.8
0.6
hours
0.4
0.2
0 0.02
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Time slots index
Charing result for vehicle 326 at each time slot
1 0.015
0.8
0.6
hours
0.4
0.2
0
1 2 3 4 5 6
Time slots index
Fig. 3: Charging results for vehicle 735 and vehicle 326.
vehicles enter the system, they will be scheduled according
to the proposed algorithm. Vehicles will leave the system
after the prior noticed plug-out time. Here, three different
types of vehicles including Sedan, Compact and Roadster
are considered. The charging rates of these types of vehicles
are 3 kW , 5.5 kW , and 6 kW and battery capacities of
these types of vehicles are 16 kW h, 35 kW h and 53 kW h,
respectively. The initial number of vehicles are 241, 232
and 327, respectively. The current SOC of the vehicles are
uniformly distributed between 0.2 and 0.7. The expected plug-
out SOC of the vehicles are all 0.9. The schedule horizon is
12 hours and is partitioned into 12 time slots with the constant
duration. The parking duration of the vehicles ranges from 3
to 12 hours. The charging and frequency regulation prices in
the first time slot are shown in Fig. 2. However, only the prices
in the first hour is the actual prices, while those in the other
11 hours are the predicted prices. By solving the optimization
problem at the beginning of each hour, we obtain the charging
and regulation sequences of all the vehicles.
A. Optimal Charging and Regulation Results
We first assume that the price in the 12 hour time hori-
zon is precisely predicted as shown in Fig. 2. To ease the
presentation, we select to present the charging results for two
PHEVs. The selected vehicles are n = 735 and n = 326. Both
vehicles are Roadsters and the initial SOC of the vehicles are
0.42 and 0.53. The parking durations of the vehicles are 9
hours and 7 hours. The charging results are shown in Fig. 3.
We observe that both vehicles plan to charge during the first
and fourth hours and regulate during the second and fifth
hours. In the seventh hour, both vehicles will charge about
20 minutes and regulate for the rest of the hour. This verifies
the previous statement that the aggregator will let the vehicles
charge (regulate) when the charging and regulation price is
low (high). Also we observe that if the electricity price varies
in accordance with the total load in the grid, the vehicles will
charge during the off-peak hours. If regulation demand is high,
the grid operator can set higher regulation prices to motivate
vehicles to regulate for the power grid. In this case, through
adjusting the prices, the grid operator can change the charging
behaviors of PHEVs.
Extra Cost due to Imperfect Price Forecast
0.035
0.03
0.025
Extra Cost /S$
9
0.01
0.005
7 0
0% 1% 2% 3% 4% 5% 6% 7% 8% 9% 10%
Price Prediction Error
Fig. 4: Mean extra cost due to price prediction error.
B. Cost Comparison Due to Price Prediction Error
The accuracy of price prediction will affect the cost. The
control sequence from the proposed charging and regulation
algorithm is optimal for the predicted prices, but not for the
real prices. We compare the average costs of two scenarios,
and the difference between these costs are called cost gap.
The fist cost is from when the aggregator charges and regulates
according to the proposed MPC-based algorithm (the predicted
prices are with error). The second cost is from when the
aggregator charges and regulates according to the truly optimal
control sequences. This cost is obtained when the prices are
perfectly known (e.g., at the end of all time slots). Basically,
the second cost is the lower bound for the aggregator. The
average cost gap is shown in Fig. 4. Compared with the
truly optimal control sequence, the extra cost will be incurred
due to the prediction error. Thus, accurate price prediction is
important which can help the aggregator to determine a control
sequence approximating the truly optimal one.
C. Cost Comparison for Different Charging Schemes
Next, we compare vehicles’ cost among three charging
schemes. In the first scheme, we control the vehicles according
to the control sequence obtained from the above MPC-based
algorithm. In the second scheme, all the vehicles will keep
charging until they reach the desired battery level and then
start to regulate. For the third one, the vehicles will first try
to regulate as long as they can and then charge to the desired
SOC. We present the costs of four randomly selected vehicles
and the mean costs of all the vehicles for aforementioned three
schemes. The results are shown in Fig. 5. From Fig. 5, we
can observe that the cost (bar height) for the first scheme is
less than the second and third ones. By taking the optimal
control sequence obtained from the proposed algorithm, the
costs of the individual vehicle and the cost of the vehicle
fleet will be reduced. In this case, PHEV owners can save
costs by permitting the aggregator to control their vehicles
and at the same time by waiting until their vehicles reach the
desired SOC before departing from the aggregator. For the
grid operator, by using electric power from a PHEV fleet with
an optimal control sequence, the fast response but expensive
power generator can be avoided, saving a significant cost and
environmental impact.
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 IEEE SmartGridComm 2013 Symposium - Demand Side Management, Demand Response, Dynamic Pricing

Cost Comparison of Three Schemes

7
Scheme 1
low but the regulation price is high. We observe that when the
Scheme 2
6 Scheme 3 penalty factor is small, the vehicle will choose to regulate for
5
almost the entire time slot to gain more revenue. However, if
4
the penalty factor increases, the vehicle will use more time to
Cost /S$

charge to meet the required battery level since the punishment

3
for not achieving the requirement is high.
2

1
V. C ONCLUSION
0
In this paper, we have designed a V2G aggregator to
Vehicle 1 Vehicle 2 Vehicle 3 Vehicle 4 Vehicle 5 Average
Vehicles effectively schedule the charging and frequency regulation pro-
cesses for a group of PHEVs. We have considered the problem
Fig. 5: Cost comparison.
that the aggregator has to minimize the cost of all the vehicles
in the system during finite time horizon while simultaneously
0.905
ensuring that vehicles are charged to the desirable level at the
plug-out time. Since the system is dynamic (e.g., vehicles can
Average Plug−out SOC of the Vehicle Fleet

0.9

join or leave the system), we have proposed the MPC-based

0.895
0.89
0.885
0.88
0.875
0 5
Fig. 6: The impact of penalty factor α to the average plug-out
SOC.
D. The Impact of Penalty Factor α
We vary α (i.e., penalty factor from missing desired SOC
at plug out time) from 1 to 30. Fig. 6 presents the SOC when
PHEVs are plugged out. It is clearly shown that plug out
SOC will converge to the desired SOC when α increases. We
observe that when α is larger than 5, the plug out SOC can
satisfy the users’ requirements. However, when α is relative
low, e.g., α = 1, the vehicles will spend more time on
regulation and less time on charging since the revenue gained
by regulating is higher than the penalty. In this case, we can
control the penalty factor α to tighten or to relax the plug-out
SOC requirement. Fig. 7 shows the charging results of vehicle
n = 735 when α = 3 and α = 10. Note that the key difference
occurs at the sixth time slot when the charging price is relative
1
Charging Results of Vehicle 735 when α=3
0.8
0.6
Hours
charging and frequency regulation algorithm to achieve the
near truly optimal control sequences for the PHEVs given the
available state and vehicle information. Also, the advantages
of the proposed algorithm have been analyzed. Numerical
results have shown that the proposed algorithm is beneficial
10 15 20 25 30
to the individual vehicle as well as the whole PHEV fleet.
Penalty Factor α
Also, the impacts of price prediction error and penalty factor
have been also discussed. For the future work, the stochastic
programming and robust optimization frameworks could be
used to take into account the uncertainties of the charging and
regulation prices.
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Fig. 7: The impact of penalty factor α to charging results.

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