Coordinating energy management systems in smart cities with electric vehicles

The rapid proliferation of Electric Vehicles (EVs) creates an inherent link between the previously independent transport and power sectors. This is especially relevant in the smart cities paradigm, which focuses on optimizing resource management using modern software tools and communication infrastructures. The optimal management of energy resources is of key importance, and with mobile EVs playing a pivotal role in smart city power flows, the coordination of energy management systems (EMSs) at their parking locations can bear global benefits. In this study the coordination between home energy management systems (HEMSs) and EV parking lot management systems (PLEMS) is proposed, modeled, and simulated, as a new contribution to earlier studies. The EMSs coordinate through partially sharing individual EV schedules and without sharing private information. Missing information is completed through public cloud repositories and services. The HEMS and PLEMS are implemented using mixed-integer linear programming (MILP). The proposed coordination framework is computationally implemented and simulated based on a real-life case study. The results show that the proposed EMS coordination framework is both technically beneficial for power grids and economically beneficial for EV owners.