The Design of Electric Vehicle Charging Network

Abstract

The promotion of Electric Vehicles (EV) has become a key measure of the governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, range anxiety is a big barrier for drivers to choose EVs over traditional vehicles. Installing more charging stations in appropriate locations can relieve EV drivers’ range anxiety. To help decide the location and number of public charging stations, we propose two optimization models for two different charging modes - fast and slow charging, which aim at minimizing the total cost while satisfying certain spatial coverage goals. Instead of using discrete points we employ network and polygons to represent charging demands. Importantly, we resolve the partial coverage problem (PCP) by segmenting the geometric objects into smaller ones using Geographic Information System (GIS) functions. We compare the geometric segmentation method (GS) and the complementary partial coverage method (CP) developed by Murray (2005) to solve the PCP. After applying the models to Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) and to Downtown Toronto, we show that that the proposed models are practical and effective in determining the locations and number of required charging stations. Moreover, comparison of the two methods shows that GS can fully eliminate PCP and provide much more accurate result than CP.