2017 IEEE International WIE Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering (WIECON-ECE)

18-19 December 2017, WIT, Dehradun, India

Optimal V2G and G2V Operation of Electric

Vehicles using Binary Hybrid Particle Swarm
Optimization and Gravitational Search Algorithm
Vishu Gupta1 , Srikanth Reddy K2 , Lokesh Panwar3 , Rajesh Kumar1 , and BK Panigrahi2
1
Department of Electrical Engineering, MNIT Jaipur, Rajasthan, India
2
Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India
3
Center for Energy Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India
email: vishu.gupta0607@gmail.com, srikanthreddy@ee.iitd.ac.in, lokesh.panwar28@gmail.com,
rkumar.ee@gmail.com, bijayaketan.panigrahi@gmail.com

Abstract— The smart grid paradigm enables improved par-
ticipation of customers in operational aspects of power system.
The optimal charge-discharge operation of electric vehicles (EV)
is one of the means for improvising such customer participation.
Therefore, this paper presents a hybrid meta heuristic approach
using particle swarm optimization and gravitational search al-
gorithm for optimal charge-discharge event management of EVs
in smart grid. The same is carried out in conjunction with the
unit commitment procedure of power system operation. The UC
problem belongs to the class of binary optimization problems
where the search space is constricted to binary digits. For this,
the real valued optimization variables and process is mapped
to binary version using tangent hyperbolic transformation. The
effectiveness of BHPSO-GSA is examined through extensive
numerical experiments on various scenarios. The simulation
results are presented, discussed and compared to other existing
approaches to demonstrate the superiority of proposed approach
in solving UC problem with and without EV in smart grid.
Keywords- Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Gravitational
Search Algorithm (GA), Electric Vehicles, V2G, G2V , UC.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Smart grid infrastructure and operational policies enable
the customer participation in various operational aspects. The
emerging technology in enabling such participation is the
deployment of electric vehicle (EV)/plug in EV (PHEV)/
hybrid EV (HEV) to rejoice multiple benefits in transportation
as well as electricity sector through grid-to-vehicle (G2V)
and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) operations. The intelligent operation
and scheduling of charge-discharge events of EVs plays an
important role in achieving system wide benefits along with
EV benefits.
The earlier research aspects of EV integration into electric
network included accessing the impact of charging demands
of EV on power system operation [1], followed by intelli-
gent EV charging to maintain a near flat system load [2].
The impact of large scale EV deployment on environmental
pollution is also examined [3]. Thereafter, charging demand
management of EV is considered along with network operation
using locational marginal price (LMP) modelling [4]. Later,
the charging load impact and management of the EV in
conjunction with thermal units through UC is studied [5].
Apart from charging demand management, the storage of
EV is utilized for multiple purposes such as energy services,
ancillary and contingency services [6]. The same is inves-
tigated by considering parking lot constraints in G2V and
V2G operation. The charge-discharge event initiation aided by
aggregator and customer perspective is also examined [7]. The
V2G operation therefore, is an important provision in enabling
the customer participation and power system benefits using
EV. The charge-discharge event management of EV/PHEV in
smart grid along with optimal generation scheduling comprises
a complex optimization problem.
The UC problem belongs to the binary class optimization
problems where, the search space is a binary vector, whereas,
G2V and V2G operation is a real valued function optimization.
For this reason, a hybrid optimization with binary along with
real valued operations is needed to solve UC-V2G problem.
This paper, presents a binary hybrid particle swarm opti-
mization (BHPSO) and gravitational search algorithm (GSA)
to solve UC-V2G operation. The UC problem is solved by
mapping the real valued search space and variables into binary
versions. Whereas, the V2G and/or G2V are dealt in real
valued variables.
The paper is organized as follows. The problem formulation
with UC and V2G objectives is presented in Section II along
with associated UC and EV constraints. The overview of
real valued and binary HPSO-GSA is explained in Section
III. Thereafter, the solution procedure for proposed UC-V2G
using BHPSO-GSA is presented in Section IV. The simula-
tion results are presented, discussed and compared to other
approaches in Section V. Section VI concludes the paper with
key findings.
II. P ROBLEM FORMULATION
The operation/scheduling of UC with V2G operation is
aided by cost minimization objective with constraints asso-
ciated with faithful operation of thermal units and EVs.

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2017 IEEE International WIE Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering (WIECON-ECE)
18-19 December 2017, WIT, Dehradun, India
A. Objective function
The total objective of UC-V2G problem consists of mini-
mizing the total cost which consists of three principle com-
ponents - fuel cost, thermal unit state transition cost (start-
up and shut down cost), V2G operation cost, i.e minT C =
F uelcost + Startupcost + V 2Gcost. This is further given as,
T X
I (6)
X P gmax h = max((P i mx ).P i t-1 − U ri ); ∀i ∈ I, t ∈ T
M in [Πi (P i (t))δ i (t) + ξ i (t)(1 − δ i (t − 1))δ i (t)]
t=1 i=1
T
X • Number of EVs - The accommodation capacity of charg-
+varrhou | P V2G (t) − Lch/di (t)|
t=1
where, T and I respectively denote the total scheduling hours
and number of thermal units, commitment and de-commitment
status of unit i in hour t is described as δ i (t) and is a binary
status bit, the power generation allocation to ith committed unit
for tth time slot is represented by Pi (t), PV2G (t) denotes the grid
interactive power of the EV, Lch/di (t) is the charge-discharge
loss coefficient of V2G/G2V operation, ξ i (t) and Πi (P g h ) are
start up and fuel cost functions ∀i ∈ I, t ∈ τ, δ i (t) ∈ {0, 1} as
given by,
( exploration properties of GSA [8]. This is a sequential process
ξ i H , if DT min i ≤ of f h g ≤ {Csh i + Dtmin i };
ξ i (t) = (2)
ξ i C , if {Csh i + Dtmin i } ≤ Of f i h ;
Πi (P i (t))2 + bi P i (t) + ci ; i ∈ I
In (2), ξ i H and ξ i C are hot and cost start-up costs of ith
unit respectively, Dti min symbolizes the minimum down time
(hours) and Of f i h is the time (hours) in de-committed state
for ith unit, Csi h represents the cold start hours of tth thermal
unit. In (3), ai , bi and ci correspond to the fuel cost coefficients
of the ith thermal unit.
B. Constraints
The constraints for the UC-V2G operation are given as:
1) System Constraints: Given ∀i ∈ I, t ∈ T , δ i (t) ∈ {0, 1}.
• Load Constraints - The power balance constraint acts as
a hard
PTconstraint
PI for optimization problem and is given
by, t=1 i=1 P i (t)δ i (t) = P t ;
• Reserve Constraint - The spinning reserve constraint can
PT PT
be realized as follows: t=1 i=1 P t mx δ i ≥ (1 + r)P t ; ,
where, r is the % online capacity above load (reserve
capacity margin), P t mx corresponds to the maximum
capacity of ith thermal unit.
2) Thermal Unit Constraints:
• Power generation bound constraints - The upper and
lower generation bounds acts as bound constraints for
the UC V2G optimization problem as given by (4)
P i mn ≤ P i δ i (t) ≤ P i mx ; ∀i ∈ I, t ∈ T , δ i (t) ∈ {0, 1} (4)
• Minimum up and down time constraints - The minimum
up/down constraints are specified for the whole schedul-
ing period, as given by,
(1 − δ i t+1 )U ti min ≤ Oni h if f δ i (t) = 1;
δ i i+1 Dti min ≤ Of f i h , if f δ i (t) = 0;
∀i ∈ I, t ∈ T , δ i (t + 1) ∈ {0, 1}
978-1-5386-2621-4/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE
where, U ti min is the minimum up time of thermal unit i.
• Ramp up and down rate constraints - The variation in
power generation between consecutive scheduling hours
is limited by ramp up and ramp down rates of thermal
unit, given as P imin t < P g h < P gmax h .
P gmin h = max((P i mn ).P i t-1 − Dri )
(1) 3) EV constraints:
ing station is limited as N V2G (t) = N V2G max ; ∀t ∈ τ
• SOC Limits of EVs - The charge-discharge events of EVs
are constrained due to SOC limits of EV storage limits
as given by SoC min EV < SoC n EV < SoC max EV ,
III. H YBRID B INARY PARTICLE S WARM O PTIMIZATION
G RAVITATIONAL S EARCH A LGORITHM (HBPSO-GSA)
A. Real valued HPSO-GSA
The objective behind the introduction of HPSO-GSA is
to maximize the benefits of PSO social coordination and
wherein the velocity and position updates of agents/variables
are carried out by updating GSA followed by PSO particle
update. For N number of agent positions with dimension
(3) d(X̂ = x1 i , . . . xd i . . . xn i ) with [i = 1, 2, 3, . . . N ], the force
of gravitation (F d i,j (t)) between ith agent and j th agent during
time iteration k is given by,
M pi (k)XM aj (k) d
F i,j d (t) = G(k) (xj (k) − xj d (k)) (7)
Ri,j (k) + 
where, M pi (k) and M aj (k) respectively represent the active
and passive gravitational masses of ith agent and j th agents,
Gk denotes the gravitational constant at iteration k,  is a
small number/constant, Ri,j (k) denotes Euclidean distance of
separation among particles i and j. Gk and Ri,j (k) are defined
as follows:
{−α∗ k k }
Gk = G0 ∗ e max (8)
Ri,j (k) = kX̂ i , X̂ j k2 (9)
where, α reduces as the current iteration (k) approaches to
maximum number of iterations (K max ). The force acting on
agent i can be expressed as,
N
X
F i d (k) = rj F i,j d (k) (10)
j=1,j6=i
where, rj is uniformly distributed random number in [0,1]. The
agent update in GSA is performed by acceleration of mass,
which is in direct proportion with force (F i d (k)) and in inverse
proportion with the mass of inertia for agent i (M ii k) as given
by,
F i d (k)
aci d (k) = (11)
M ii (k)
(5) where, the mass (inertial, passive) of the agent i (Mai = Mpi =
Mii ) is calculated after every iteration k using the fitness of ith
158
2017 IEEE International WIE Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering (WIECON-ECE)
18-19 December 2017, WIT, Dehradun, India

agent (f i (k)), best fitness (f best (k)), worst fitness (f worst (k))
as follows:
f i (k) − f worst (k)
mi (k) = (12)
f best (k) − f worst (k)
mi (k)
M ii (k) = P (13)
( j = 1)N mj (k)
The update operation of Gbest in HBPSO-GSA is carried
out using PSO update as the GSA is vulnerable to slow
convergence rate at the end of iteration process. This can
be due to the minimal movement of masses towards the
end of iterations, or as k moves towards k max , the distance
between masses will reduce drastically (as all the masses are
wandering near to best solution and experiencing same force
between them) which reduces the exploitation ability of the
Fig. 1: Flow chart of UC-V2G solution procedure
masses/agents. This problem is solved in PSO-GSA by guiding
the heavier masses using Gbest obtained using best fitness after
PSO update process as given by, • Find the fitness and assign Gbest .
d
V̂ i (k+1) = rand∗ V̂ i (k)+c1 ∗sci (k)+c2 ∗(Gbest − X̂ i ) (14) 2) Real valued position update -
where, the velocity of ith agent during the k th iteration is given • Evaluate the force between agents using (7).

by V̂ i (k), c1 , c2 are accelerating factors, rand is a uniformly • Estimate agents’ acceleration coefficients using (9).

distributed random number over [0,1], Gbest corresponds to • Update velocity/positions of agents using (14)/(15).

the best solution obtained so far among all agents N, aci d (k)
is the acceleration coefficient of ith agent/particle. The velocity
update operation is followed by the position update operation
as in (15).
X̂ i (k + 1) = X̂ i (k) + V̂ i (k + 1) (15)
B. Binary HPSO-GSA (BHPSO-GSA)
BHPSO-GSA can be formulated by using any transfer
functions that is used for binary mapping of real valued search
space. The selection of transfer function is subjected to its
efficiency in allocating high transition probability for higher
values of velocity change in real valued optimization process
3) Binary Valued Position Update and Economic Load Dis-
patch (ELD) - The real valued position of the agents is
followed by the binary update (16). The committed units
are then allotted with generation using ELD. The fitness
value/cost is sorted to update Gbest . This procedure is
continued until the stopping criteria (function tolerance
or kmax ) is achieved.
4) Constraint Repair - Since, the presented BHPSO-GSA
is a heuristic search process, the variables at times may
experience constraint violation. Direct constraint repair
through heuristic adjustment is used as follows.
• Check for violation of power balance constraint and

and vice-versa. The bounds of the transfer function should be repair with unit transition if needed.
between 0 and 1 to facilitate state transition. In this work, a • Check for reserve constraint violation and update bit

hyperbolic transfer function is employed, transition in preceding hour.

( • Execute decommitment in case of excess reserve by
= 0|tanh(V̂ i d (k + 1))| > N r turning off the units.
ϕi d (k + 1) = (16)
= 1Otherwise • Continue checking till all constraints are satisfied for
total scheduling horizon.
where, tanh(V̂ i d (k)) represents the hyperbolic tangent trans-
formation of real valued velocity update of ith agent as follows, IV. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION
1− eV i d (k + 1) The proposed BHPSO-GSA is evaluated for test system with
tanh(V̂ i d (k + 1)) = (17) 10 thermal units and 50000 EVs aggregated. Thermal unit
1+ eV i d (k + 1)
operating characteristics and cost parameters are adopted from
C. Solution for UC-V2G using BHPSO-GSA
[6] and GSA and PSO algorithm parameters are from [7]. The
The procedure for UC-V2G is explained through flow chart hourly spinning reserve is assumed to be 10% of the load at
shown in Fig. 1. In Fig 1., the solution procedure can further that particular hour. The minimum and maximum SOC levels
be described as: of the EV storage are assumed to be 0.5 and 1 respectively.
1) Initialization - The UC-V2G model is executed for 30 identical trials. The
• Initialize algorithm parameters - number of agents N, proposed BHPSO-GSA is applied to two cases - with and
maximum number of iterations (k max ),c1 ; c2 ; G0 ; ; without V2G attributes. The best operational cost without and
• Initialize the positions and velocities randomly with with V2G operation is $563977 and $560015 respectively.
dimension ((N +1)*T) The average cost of operation without EV is $564758.41

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2017 IEEE International WIE Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering (WIECON-ECE)
18-19 December 2017, WIT, Dehradun, India

against the UC-V2G operation with average operation cost

of $563428. Table 1 shows the performance comparison of
BHPSO-GSA with and without EV.
TABLE I: Performance comparison of BHPSO-GSA
PSO LR-PSO
Best Worst Avg. Best Worst Avg.
Without V2G 567029 567436 567191.8 565870 - -
With V2G - - - - - -
GA BPSO
Best Worst Avg. Best Worst Avg. Fig. 3: EV charge-discharge characteristics
Without V2G 565825 - 570032 565814 - -
With V2G - - - - - -
ALR BF
Best Worst Avg. Best Worst Avg. with commitment and decommitment status of thermal units
Without V2G 565508 - - 564842 - -
With V2G - - - - - - occupying either 0 or 1 states in a binary search pace. Suit-
MHPSO BHPSO-GSA able changes are incorporated in HPSO-GSA through tangent
Best Worst Avg. Best Worst Avg.
Without V2G 564419 564432.7 564423.9 563977 565315.49 564758.41 hyperbolic transfer function to map the real valued variables
With V2G - - - 560015.49 564848.19 563428
into binary variables. However, the charge-discharge event are
It can be observed that the performance of BHPSO-GSA optimizing the real valued HPSO-GSA only. The UC-V2G
is superior compared to PSO[9], Modified hybrid PSO (MH- operation using BHPSO-GSA is evalued using test system with
PSO) [10],Lagrangian relaxation with PSO (LR-PSO) [9], thermal units and EVs. The comparison of simulation results
Binary PSO (BPSO)[9], GA[11], Bacterial Foraging (BF) [12] concludes the effectiveness of proposed BHPSO-GSA UC and
and Adaptive Lagrangian Relaxation (ALR)[13], with respect UC-V2G effectively.
to solution quality. The commitment and schedule of thermal
units without and with UC-V2G operation is shown in Fig. 2(a) R EFERENCES
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