Carbon-Aware Rolling-Horizon Energy Management of Electric Vehicles via Virtual Power Plants Under Carbon–Grid Conflict

The large-scale integration of electric vehicles (EVs) introduces significant operational challenges for power systems, particularly when grid-favourable operating periods coincide with high marginal carbon emissions. This paper proposes a carbon-aware rolling-horizon energy management framework for EV fleets coordinated through virtual power plants (VPPs), explicitly addressing such carbon–grid conflict conditions. The proposed framework prioritises grid-friendly scheduling through power and ramp constraints while enforcing energy-service equivalence and a policy-level carbon budget consistent with carbon peak and carbon neutrality objectives. Carbon awareness is incorporated as a secondary steering term within the rolling-horizon optimisation, enabling temporal shifting of EV charging toward low-carbon periods without compromising grid stability. A Pareto-based trade-off analysis is conducted to characterise the relationship between grid stress mitigation and carbon reduction, and a knee point is identified to select a balanced operating regime. Simulation results using real EV charging demand combined with a conflict-driven carbon intensity signal demonstrate that grid-oriented scheduling alone can increase emissions under carbon–grid mismatch. In the evaluated conflict scenario, the proposed carbon-aware rolling-horizon strategy achieves a 17.35% reduction in total CO₂ emissions relative to RH-NoCarbon scheduling while maintaining peak–valley load variation below 11.03 kW compared with 43.65 kW under uncontrolled charging. These results confirm that explicit carbon-aware coordination can significantly mitigate emissions without compromising grid operational stability. All control strategies are evaluated in a simulation environment using real EV charging demand data as exogenous inputs, ensuring realistic demand representation while enabling controlled assessment of operational performance. These findings highlight the necessity of embedding carbon considerations directly into operational EV scheduling and establish VPP-based rolling-horizon coordination as a practical mechanism for low-carbon power system operation.