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With the uptake of electric vehicles (EVs) promoted by many governments, the impact of electric vehicles on electricity grids will become significant in the near future. In Australia, charging a typical EV battery puts the same demand per day on the grid as an average household, which could lead to a sizeable increase in peak demand. However, the negative impacts of EVs can be mitigated if their charging is scheduled during times of otherwise low demand, such as overnight. The majority of studies trying to achieve this require a certain level of coordination among EVs and/or a central controller. In many countries, however, the hardware and infrastructure required for central charging methods do not exist. Here EV charging is approached from a distributed point of view, and a protocol in which charging decisions are made individually at each household, without any access to full network state is proposed. The …