Electric Vehicle Battery Sharing Game for Mobile Energy Storage Provision in Power Networks

Abstract: Electric vehicles (EVs) equipped with a bidirectional charger can provide valuable grid services as mobile energy storage. However, proper financial incentives need to be in place to enlist EV drivers to provide services to the grid. In this paper, we consider two types of EV drivers who may be willing to provide mobile storage service using their EVs: commuters taking a fixed route, and on-demand EV drivers who receive incentives from a transportation network company (TNC) and are willing to take any route. We model the behavior of each type of driver using game theoretic methods, and characterize the Nash equilibrium (NE) of an EV battery sharing game where each EV driver withdraws power from the grid to charge its EV battery at the origin of a route, travels from the origin to the destination, and then discharges power back to the grid at the destination of the route. The driver earns a payoff that depends on the participation of other drivers and power network conditions. We characterize the NE in three situations: when there are only commuters, when there are only on-demand TNC drivers, and when the two groups of drivers co-exist. In particular, we show that the equilibrium outcome supports the social welfare in each of these three cases.