Pricing Scheme Design for Vehicle-to-Grid Considering Customers Risk-Aversive Behaviors

The increasing penetration of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) brings both opportunities and challenges to the power grid. Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) proposes a promising solution that enhances grid resilience, reduces carbon emissions and saves facility investment. However, the actual motivation of drivers to participate in such programs is questionable: they may have to unexpectedly depart earlier than their schedules, thus worrying that their cars are short in charge by then. As a consequence, they may refuse to accept the flexible charging plan even though it is attractive in the explicit cost.In this work, we formulate a bi-level model where EV charging station (EVCS) and drivers are considered as distinct entities, both having their own utility functions to maximize. We make extensive discussion on the stochasticity in actual cost of a session, including the energy cost and potential dissatisfaction, of choosing different charging modes. We character the behavioral differences among different customers with varying time value \nu and risk preference factor \rho, challenging the widely-adopted assumption that all customers are risk-neutral.Accordingly, we propose a novel pricing/service scheme as\emph{double commitment} (DC) to alleviate customer' concerns on energy short when engaging V2G. The name of the scheme name suggests that besides the \emph{single commitment} (SC) on full charge by stated departure, it also allows users to specify a safety window within which EV charge for basic mobility is ensured. We demonstrate that by introducing double commitment, 15% more customers change their charging modes from ASAP to FLEX/V2G. As a consequence, EVCS gains flexibility to save energy costs, which is mainly realized from a reduction of demand charge. Hence, it also helps enhance the grid security and stability.