Determination of the Selling Price Offered by Electricity Suppliers to Electric Vehicle Users

The number of plug-in electric vehicles has increased significantly during the last years and it is expected to continue growing firmly over the coming years. In this context, it is necessary to analyze carefully the problem faced by electricity suppliers that seek to provide the energy needed to charge the batteries of electric vehicles. In this paper, we propose a stochastic programming framework to decide at which selling price an electricity supplier should sell the energy to a set of potential clients consisting of electric vehicle users. The preferences of electric vehicle users on the selection of their electricity supplier is characterized using a Hotelling model. Two different cases are formulated considering that: 1) the charge of electric vehicles is not coordinated and 2) the charge and discharge are controlled by the electricity supplier. The resulting mixed-integer linear formulations are tested on a realistic case study based on the Spanish power system.