Communication-Censored-ADMM for Electric Vehicle Charging in Unbalanced Distribution Grids

Abstract

We propose an alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM)-based algorithm for coordinating the charge and discharge of electric vehicles (EVs) to manage grid voltages while minimizing EV time-of-use energy costs. We prove that by including a Communication-Censored strategy, the algorithm maintains its solution integrity, while reducing peer-to-peer communications. By means of a case study on a representative unbalanced two node circuit, we demonstrate that our proposed Communication-Censored-ADMM (CC-ADMM) EV charging strategy reduces peer-to-peer communications by up to 80%, compared to a benchmark ADMM approach.