Design of Time-of-Use Price for Charging Stations in Residential Areas Considering Load Reduction

As an effective demand response means, the time-of-use (abbr. TOU) price provides an approach to solve the trouble that due to the increasing penetration of electric vehicle (abbr. EV) in residential area the existing power equipments cannot meet the need of the requirement of EV charging. For this reason, firstly, based on the travel habits and scheduling choices of electric vehicle users a load curve was established. Secondly, taking the minimum peak to valley difference of the total load as the objective the primary adjustment of total load was performed. Finally, combining with the cost of load reduction and taking the least sensitivity of users’ comprehensive electric charge as the objective, the TOU price was obtained and the secondary adjustment of the total load was realized. Moreover, during the solving of the model the particle swarm optimization (abbr. PSO) algorithm was improved. Results of computing example show that by means of electricity price design it is possible to make the load aggregator enable to meet the need of EV charging, the electricity price determined by the proposed method is beneficial to lead the EV owners from not allowing the aggregator to schedule to allowing the aggregator to schedule, besides, it is also shown that the improved PSO algorithm possesses a higher convergence rate.