Charging station planning scheme by making efficient use of soft computing techniques for low carbon transition

Abstract

For sustainable energy management, soft computing can play an important role in developing a charging station planning for low carbon transition to address the challenges faced by electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure system. This article proposes a planning scheme for charging stations of electronic vehicles for low carbon transition using soft computing-based computational techniques in the transportation sector. The existing charging stations have many flaws which are acting as hindrance in the development and acceptance of electronic vehicles by consumers. These flaws include the unreasonable layout of charging terminals, difficulty in charging, consumption of time in charging, and consumer convenience. This paper proposes a novel planning model for charging electronic vehicles as an innovative solution for electronic vehicles for low carbon transition. The protection of the environment is important in this current era and switching to electronic vehicles is a mandate for low-carbon transitions in the transportation sector. The proposed method begins with the collection of data from diverse sites of charging stations using the existing charging infrastructure, and this data also analyzed for ascertaining the energy consumption patterns, availability of renewable energy options, flow of traffic, and consumer preferences. The proposed method aims to augment the deployment of convenient charging infrastructure to promote consumers to switch to electronic vehicles from fuel-based vehicles and to promote renewable energy solutions for electric vehicles (EVs) at economic costs. The location and capacity of charging terminals is also optimized with the aid of hybrid algorithm based on catfish and PSO algorithms in this proposed research work. The effectiveness of the proposed soft computing-based hybrid algorithm is tested by using standard statistical methods and respective results are presented in the result section of this article. The proposed research has practical implications in a real-world scenario where consumers can be promoted to use electric vehicles by optimizing the capacity and availability of the charging station infrastructure which can eventually reduce the carbon footprints from this world.