Why This Matters

Deploying V2B charging systems requires understanding how different control policies perform under real-world conditions with diverse uncertainties, yet existing tools either focus on specific optimization techniques or lack the flexibility to accommodate varied operational scenarios. OPTIMUS is innovative because it provides a comprehensive, modular simulation platform that enables practical policy development and evaluation by combining real-world data streams with configurable solution algorithms.

What We Did

OPTIMUS is a discrete event simulator for vehicle-to-building charging optimization that combines real-world EV data with flexible policy evaluation. The platform integrates generative models for EV arrivals, building loads, and demand charges with configurable optimization algorithms including greedy heuristics, mixed-integer linear programming, and reinforcement learning. OPTIMUS enables building owners and EV manufacturers to test charging policies under diverse scenarios while accounting for realistic uncertainty in EV arrivals and building operations.

Key Results

The platform enables evaluation of diverse V2B charging policies on real building and EV data, supporting policy development through extensive scenario analysis. Results demonstrate the ability to predict policy performance under various conditions including different arrival patterns, building loads, and grid events.

Full Abstract

Cite This Paper

@inproceedings{talusan2024smartcomp,
  author = {Talusan, Jose Paolo and Sen, Rishav and Ava Pettet, Aaron Kandel and Suzue, Yoshinori and Pedersen, Liam and Mukhopadhyay, Ayan and Dubey, Abhishek},
  booktitle = {2024 IEEE International Conference on Smart Computing (SMARTCOMP)},
  title = {OPTIMUS: Discrete Event Simulator for Vehicle-to-Building Charging Optimization},
  year = {2024},
  month = {jun},
  acceptance = {32.9},
  abstract = {The increasing popularity of electronic vehicles has spurred a demand for EV charging infrastructure. In the United States alone, over 160,000 public and private charging ports have been installed. This has stoked fear of potential grid issues in the future. Meanwhile, companies, specifically building owners are also seeing the opportunity to leverage EV batteries as energy stores to serve as buffers against the electric grid. The main idea is to influence and control charging behavior to provide a certain level of energy resiliency and demand responsiveness to the building from grid events while ensuring that they meet the demands of EV users.  However, managing and co-optimizing energy requirements of EVs and cost-saving measures of building owners is a difficult task. First, user behavior and grid uncertainty contribute greatly to the potential effectiveness of different policies.  Second, different charger configurations can have drastically different effects on the cost. Therefore, we propose a complete end-to-end discrete event simulator for vehicle-to-building charging optimization. This software is aimed at building owners and EV manufacturers such as Nissan, looking to deploy their charging stations with state-of-the-art optimization algorithms. We provide a complete solution that allows the owners to train, evaluate, introduce uncertainty, and benchmark policies on their datasets. Lastly, we discuss the potential for extending our work with other vehicle-to-grid deployments.},
  contribution = {lead},
  keywords = {vehicle-to-building, EV charging, discrete event simulation, policy evaluation, optimization, charging management},
  month_numeric = {6}
}
Quick Info
Year 2024
Keywords
vehicle-to-building EV charging discrete event simulation policy evaluation optimization charging management
Research Areas
energy CPS planning
Search Tags

OPTIMUS, Discrete, Event, Simulator, Vehicle, Building, Charging, Optimization, vehicle-to-building, EV charging, discrete event simulation, policy evaluation, optimization, charging management, energy, CPS, planning, 2024, Talusan, Sen, Ava Pettet, Suzue, Pedersen, Mukhopadhyay, Dubey