Electric Vehicle Charging Station Placement Method for Urban Areas

For accommodating more electric vehicles (EVs) to battle against fossil fuel emission, the problem of charging station placement is inevitable and could be costly if done improperly. Research considers a general setup using conditions such as driving ranges for planning. However, most of the EV growths in the next decades will happen in urban areas where driving range is not the biggest concern. For such a need, we consider several practical aspects of urban systems, such as voltage regulation cost and protection device upgrade resulting from the large integration of EVs. Notably, our diversified objective can reveal the trade-off between different factors in different cities worldwide. To understand the global optimum of large-scale analysis, we studied each feature to preserve the problem convexity. Our sensitivity analysis before and after convexification shows that our approach is not only universally applicable but also has a small approximation error for prioritizing the most urgent constraint in a specific setup. Finally, numerical results demonstrate the trade-off, the relationship between different factors and the global objective, and the small approximation error. A unique observation in this paper shows the importance of incorporating the protection device upgrade in urban system planning on charging stations.

I. Introduction

Under the Paris agreement signed in 2016, the model of a sustainable urban city – Singapore, pledged to cut emissions intensity by 36% below 2005 levels by 2030 [1]. To meet the commitment, emissions reduction worldwide in the transport sector is crucial, and large-scale electric vehicle (EV) adoption in the future is, therefore, utmost essential to Singapore and many other cities/countries. For example, Singapore took several important steps in this direction such as 1) an announcement of a new Vehicular Emissions Scheme [2] and 2) the launch of the electric vehicle car-sharing program [3], etc. However, one of the major barriers to successful adoption of EVs at a large scale is the limited number of available charging stations. Thus, it is important to properly deploy EV charging infrastructure to enhance the adoption of EVs efficiently.