Assessing EV user’s willingness to participate in the smart charging program

Abstract

Electric cars have grown steeply over the past decade, as they have become a new growth engine for sustainable development. However, electric vehicles' rapid growth could cause power supply and demand imbalance and additional power installations. As a solution, adjusting the charging speed or time of EV batteries, Smart Charging Program, is emerging. Based on a survey of 996 EV users in Korea on their behavior of charging EVs and discrete choice experiment on the Smart Charge Program, this study investigates willingness to participate in the Smart Charging Program. The mixed logit model was used to analyze how the respondents' behavior and individual characteristics affect the preference of the program. As a result, EV users see high inconvenience cost with Smart Charging program, especially, they are highly sensitive to the State of Charge. Therefore, it is recommended to reduce the level of discomfort to recruit more participants for DR aggregator including EV charging companies. These findings can be used in the design of Smart Charging Program in the future.