Heuristic strategy for smart charging of Plug-In Electric Vehicle in residential areas: Variable charge power

The Plug-In Electric Vehicles (PEV) are considered to be a mid-term solution to reducing the transportation sector's dependency on oil. Nevertheless, PEVs implemented in a large scale without control can lead to destabilizing the grid due to the significant increase of the peak load. In the present paper, an offline heuristic algorithm is developed for smart charging the Plug-In Electric Vehicles, minimizing the charging cost. An analysis based on different load powers existing in France and considering two types of energy prices (energy price in France and energy price in the US) shows that the charging cost can be minimized up to 48.7% for the price distribution in the US and up to 33.2% for France.