Optimizing Charging Strategies for Electric Vehicle Owners: A Comparison of Charging Strategies to Schedule Optimal Home Charging

Abstract

The rapid growth in the Norwegian electric vehicle market has put Norway in a unique position as the leading country in electric vehicle adoption. With few challenges in the establishment of charging infrastructure, most electric vehicle owners will at some point charge their vehicle at home. The charging process of the vehicles can utilize business analytics to schedule the charging to optimize the desired objectives. In this thesis, we performed a comparison of charging strategies for electric vehicle owners to schedule optimal charging at home. The charging strategies differ in the time periods of charging and are based on the charging behavior of electric vehicle owners in Norway. In order to compare the strategies, we developed a linear programming model that minimizes the charging cost. The spot prices of electricity for 2021 was retrieved as the thesis is conducted in a retrospective manner. The thesis finds that the flexible night strategy would have experienced the lowest annual charging cost of 1935.36 NOK. In addition, we find the most costly annual charging cost of 2584.01 NOK associated with the forced afternoon strategy. This is a cost increase of approximately 34% compared to the strategy with the lowest annual cost. The results imply that the flexible strategies which can charge at any hour during the day choose to charge the most at night. This thesis further investigates how the charging costs would be affected if the new network tariff model, to be implemented on July l, 2022, was implemented in 2021. The results show that the new network tariffwould lead to an increase in the variable charging cost for the strategies charging in the afternoon. In contrast, the results imply that the strategies utilizing the off-peak hours of electricity would have experienced a decrease in the variable cost. Lastly, adjustments in the battery capacity and driving range of the electric vehicle were made to investigate the cost effect on the strategies. The results show a decrease in the charging cost as the range increases. The most considerable cost reduction is seen when the range increases from 200 km to 300 km for all the charging strategies.