Towards an optimal assignment and scheduling for charging electric vehicles

In recent years, very great research effort have been made to further develop the power engine of electric vehicles and batteries. However, little attention has been paid so far to the fact that charging process for electric vehicles is completely different from refueling process of vehicles that are powered by conventional power engines. One of the major obstacles for the large deployment of electric vehicles is the uncertainty of drivers to get a suitable and vacant place at a charging station. In this paper, an integrated platform is introduced with the main objective to increase the synergy between different system entities, such as energy providers, charging stations and electric vehicles. The platform architecture is based on communications technologies, Web services and geo-positioning techniques. An optimization approach for optimal scheduling and assignment of electric vehicles to charging stations is proposed. Preliminary results are presented to illustrate this approach and show the usefulness of this integrated solution.