Stackelberg-Game-Based Demand Response for At-Home Electric Vehicle Charging

Consumer electricity consumption can be controlled through electricity prices, which is called demand response. Under demand response, retailers determine their electricity prices, and customers respond accordingly with their electricity consumption levels. In particular, the demands of customers who own electric vehicles (EVs) are elastic with respect to price. The interaction between retailers and customers can be seen as a game because both attempt to maximize their own payoffs. This study models an at-home EV charging scenario as a Stackelberg game and proves that this game reaches an equilibrium point at which the EV charging requirements are satisfied, and retailer profits are maximized when customers use our proposed utility function. The equilibrium of our game can vary according to the weighting factor for the utility function of each customer, resulting in various strategic choices. Our numerical results confirm that the equilibrium of the proposed game lies somewhere between the minimum-generation-cost solution and the result of the equal-charging scheme.