Optimal location of charging stations for electric vehicles

Abstract

The electrification of road transportation requires a massive investment in charging infrastructure to keep up with the demand for underway charging. A substantial research effort is put into the problem of finding optimal locations for said charging facilities. These efforts are, however, often concentrated on covering a maximum number of routes, without considering the effect on the power grid when these charging facilities and chargers are connected to the power grid. Or they focus on the simulation of the load the charging facilities exert on the power grid and minimizing this load. This thesis suggests three mathematical models for covering a set of routes while ensuring connectivity to the grid as a compromise between these approaches. The motivation for the development of this method is to showcase the usefulness of practical implementations of mathematical programming in infrastructure planning. We test the models on a case where we use data from Trøndelag county in Norway to find the optimal locations for charging facilities, and the number of chargers needed at each facility to account for traffic. We do this while minimizing the total costs while ensuring that we do not exceed the limit of available electricity in the grid.