Redesign of sharing charging system for electric vehicles using blockchain technology

Electric vehicles (EVs) have great potential in improving environmental sustainability. However, current charging infrastructures could not meet the heightening demand due to the rapid expansion of EVs. Sharing private charge posts with others during idle time, as a win-win solution for charge post owners and non-owner EV drivers, is a proactive response to the dilemma. To build a trusted environment for the peer-to-peer charge post rental service, we explore a blockchain-enabled sharing charging system with redesigned operating procedures and a tailored non-myopic charge post match strategy. The new system can leverage the advantages of blockchain in privacy-preserving and misbehavior-auditing while fully utilizing shared charging facilities. The proposed system model is validated on Ethereum, and test results suggest that the redesigned system can provide high quality services with affordable computational resource consumption. Moreover, the results also report that, compared to the myopic strategy, the non-myopic strategy can improve the overall matching successful rate of charging requests by considering the potential impact of each assignment, especially when charge post resources are scarce.

Automated summary

Electric vehicles have the potential to improve environmental sustainability, but the current charging infrastructures cannot keep up with the increasing demand. Sharing private charge posts during idle time is a proactive solution that benefits both charge post owners and non-owner EV drivers. To create a trusted environment, a blockchain-enabled sharing charging system with redesigned procedures and a non-myopic charge post match strategy is proposed. Test results on Ethereum show that the redesigned system can provide high quality services with affordable computational resource consumption and improve the overall matching successful rate of charging requests.