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A Procedure for Optimizing the Location of Electric Vehicle Charging Stations
Aljuboori, Abdullah Waleed
Aljuboori, Abdullah Waleed
Date
2021-12
Author
Advisor
Type
Thesis
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Description
A Master of Science thesis in Civil Engineering by Abdullah Waleed Aljuboori entitled, “A Procedure for Optimizing the Location of Electric Vehicle Charging Stations”, submitted in December 2021. Thesis advisor is Dr. Akmal Abdelfatah. Soft copy is available (Thesis, Completion Certificate, Approval Signatures, and AUS Archives Consent Form).
Abstract
The emission of harmful gasses is increasing due to the significant increase in the number of vehicles, which poses a problem for public health. To improve environmental conditions, countries must start planning and encouraging the use of electric vehicles (EVs). However, before the widespread adoption of electric vehicles, charging stations need to be planned to meet the charging needs of electric vehicles. These charging stations need to be placed at various locations to serve the maximum number of electric vehicles without significant delays. Such service will encourage the use of electric vehicles to perform daily trips. In this thesis, the simulation software DYNASMART (Dynamic Network Assignment Simulation for Road Telematics) was utilized to simulate different percentages of electric vehicles within the traffic stream. In order to simulate EVs in DYNASMART, different modifications and two main components were coded. The modifications included adding EVs and their parameters to the code, the charging parameters, and modifying the code to track the battery charge level. For the components, a subroutine to select a charging station was coded. Also, a component to consider the process inside the charging station was coded. This component needs to keep track of the number of occupied and unoccupied charging units, charging time, expected waiting time for vehicles arriving at the charging station, etc. Additionally, an optimization model was developed to optimize the number and location of electric vehicle charging stations. The problem considers a predefined number of possible locations of charging stations. The optimization procedure will determine the best location for the minimum number of charging stations to minimize the total cost of constructing the stations and the value of waiting and charging times. The developed optimization model is a complex problem that cannot be solved for the exact solution. Thus, solution procedures were developed and tested under different traffic congestion levels and different EV percentages in the traffic flow. The results showed an average reduction of about 50% to 90% based on the traffic congestion level and the percentage of EVs in the traffic flow.