Designing ev charging stations deployment through holistic simulations: the sanevec project

Abstract

To determine the optimal location of the large number of urban public charging stations that will have to be deployed in the following years to transition to electric vehicles (EVs) is a challenging task, as it is intimately interconnected with the complexity of urban traffic and electric grid operation. The city is a complex system in which emerging patterns such as traffic jams, and instabilities or even outages in the electric grid are difficult to predict. The layout of charging stations can alter those patterns in traffic and electric grid operation, with consequences to mobility, air quality, and electric system. The present article presents the concept under the research project SANEVEC. It will build a framework for the optimal determination of the location of EV charging stations in a city based on simulation, which will be able to reproduce the feedback effects between all the variables involved: locations of the stations, traffic patterns, characteristics, and operation of the electricity grid, charging fees and air quality in the city. It will employ artificial intelligence methods to find high-quality station location solutions from the simulations and to predict the air quality in the city.