An approximately truthful mechanism for electric vehicle charging via joint differential privacy

In electric vehicle (EV) charging, the goal is to compute a charging schedule that meets all user specifications while minimizing the influence on the power grid. Usually, an optimal schedule is computed by a central authority (called mediator) according to the specifications reported by the users. A desirable property of this procedure is to ensure that participating users truthfully report their specifications rather than maliciously manipulate the scheduling process by misreporting. In this work, we show that approximate truthfulness can be attained by adopting the popular notion of (joint) differential privacy. Joint differential privacy can limit the power of each user in manipulating the scheduling process by remaining insensitive to changes in user specifications. As a result, a user does not benefit much from misreporting his specifications, which leads to truth-telling behaviors.