Recently, the IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES), a leading global organization in electrical and electronic engineering, completed the selection process for the 2024 Outstanding Paper Awards for its flagship journal, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid (TSG).

The paper titled “Optimal Pricing of Public Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Considering Operations of Coupled Transportation and Power Systems”, co-authored by Dr. Cui Yan (a former PhD student), Associate Professor Hu Zechun (corresponding author), and Postdoctoral Researcher Duan Xiaoyu, was selected as the winner of the 2024 Outstanding Paper Award. The paper, which was one of over a thousand submissions, received the highest recognition and was nominated for the PES Prize Paper Award.

IEEE TSG is one of the most influential academic journals in the fields of power systems and smart grids globally. Every year, the journal evaluates and recognizes outstanding papers, reviewers, and editors. This year, the Outstanding Paper Award was selected from over one thousand papers published in the last three years, with the highest-scoring five papers being honored as Outstanding Papers.

Award-Winning Paper

Optimal Pricing Framework for Public Electric Vehicle (EV) Charging Stations with Coupled Transportation and Power Systems

The paper focuses on the optimization of the collaborative operation of electric vehicles and the power grid under the context of energy-transportation coupling. With the increasing deployment of electric vehicles in urban areas, the coupling between urban transportation networks and distribution networks has become tighter, necessitating the development of transportation-energy optimization models that can guide and regulate EV charging. From the perspective of charging network operators, the paper models the optimal pricing problem of public EV charging stations considering the coupling between transportation and energy networks as a bi-level optimization problem. The study uses fixed-point theory to analyze the properties of the optimal pricing problem and designs an iterative method to sequentially solve the charging network pricing sub-problem and the distribution network market clearing sub-problem, yielding optimal pricing results. The proposed optimal pricing strategy provides a new model for urban EV charging guidance and regulation, balancing both the safe and economic operation of the distribution network and the convenient and economical charging experience for EV users.

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China’s key project "Research on the Planning and Operation Key Technologies of the Integration of Energy, Information, and Transportation Networks (U1766205)" and the International Cooperation Project "Multidimensional Modeling and Optimization Technologies for Electric Vehicles and Renewable Energy Integration (51861135301)".

Paper Citation and Full Text Download Link:

Y. Cui, Z. Hu, and X. Duan, "Optimal Pricing of Public Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Considering Operations of Coupled Transportation and Power Systems," IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 3278-3288, July 2021, doi: 10.1109/TSG.2021.3053026.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9330803