Smart Charging of Electric Vehicles using Reinforcement Learning

The introduction of Electric Vehicles (EVs) in the existing Energy Grid raises many issues regarding Grid stability and charging behavior. Uncontrolled charging on the customer’s side may increase the already high peaks in the energy demand that lead to respective increase in the energy prices. We propose a novel smart charging algorithm that maximizes individual welfare and reduces the individual energy expenses. We use Reinforcement Learning trained on real world data to learn the individual household consumption behavior and propose a charging algorithm with respect to individual welfare maximization objective. Furthermore, we use statistical customer models to simulate the EV customer behavior. We show that the individual customers, represented by intelligent agents, using the proposed charging algorithm reduce their energy expenses. Additionally, we show that the average energy prices, on an aggregated level, are reduced as a result of smarter use of the energy available. Finally we prove that the presented algorithm achieves significant peak reduction and reshaping of the energy demand curve.