Anomaly Detection in Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Using Federated Learning

Federated Learning (FL) is a decentralized training framework widely used in IoT ecosystems that preserves privacy by keeping raw data local, making it ideal for IoT-enabled cyber-physical systems with sensing and communication like Smart Grids (SGs), Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAV), and Electric Vehicle Charging Stations (EVCS). With the rapid expansion of electric vehicle infrastructure, securing these IoT-based charging stations against cyber threats has become critical. Centralized Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) raise privacy concerns due to sensitive network and user data, making FL a promising alternative. However, current FL-based IDS evaluations overlook practical challenges such as system heterogeneity and non-IID data. To address these challenges, we conducted experiments to evaluate the performance of federated learning for anomaly detection in EV charging stations under system and data heterogeneity. We used FedAvg and FedAvgM, widely studied optimization approaches, to analyze their effectiveness in anomaly detection. Under IID settings, FedAvg achieves superior performance to centralized models using the same neural network. However, performance degrades with non-IID data and system heterogeneity. FedAvgM consistently outperforms FedAvg in heterogeneous settings, showing better convergence and higher anomaly detection accuracy. Our results demonstrate that FL can handle heterogeneity in IoT-based EVCS without significant performance loss, with FedAvgM as a promising solution for robust, privacy-preserving EVCS security.