Location Design of Electric Vehicle Charging Facilities: A Path-Distance Constrained Stochastic User Equilibrium Approach

Abstract

Location of public charging stations, range limit, and long battery-charging time inevitably affect drivers’ path choice behavior and equilibrium flows of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in a transportation network. This study investigates the effect of the location of BEVs public charging facilities on a network with mixed conventional gasoline vehicles (GVs) and BEVs. These two types of vehicles are distinguished from each other in terms of travel cost composition and distance limit. A bilevel model is developed to address this problem. In the upper level, the objective is to maximize coverage of BEV flows by locating a given number of charging stations on road segments considering budget constraints. A mixed-integer nonlinear program is proposed to formulate this model. A simple equilibrium-based heuristic algorithm is developed to obtain the solution. Finally, two numerical tests are presented to demonstrate applicability of the proposed model and feasibility and effectiveness of the solution algorithm. The results demonstrate that the equilibrium traffic flows are affected by charging speed, range limit, and charging facilities’ utility and that BEV drivers incline to choose the route with charging stations and less charging time.