Abstract
Increasing attention is being paid to the technology of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) because of their environmental friendliness. However, their short range, extended recharging times, and insufficient charging facilities hinder the improvement in the market share of BEVs. As a remedy, this paper presents a novel approach to providing a service for the battery charge replenishment of BEVs. Instead of using traditional alternative methods by only providing a charging service in a fixed location, such as battery-swapping and charging lanes, the novel charge replenishment is provided by mobile charging vehicles (MCVs), which could offer a charging service at any time and at location requested. To consider the limited running range and the opportunity to recharge from MCVs, as well as to determine the location strategy of multiple types of plug-in charging facility locations and the routing plan of the MCVs simultaneously, the location routing problem (LRP) that can integrate two decision levels, with a strategic level (location) and tactical level (routing), is applied. Then, we present the multiple types of plug-in charging facilities’ location-routing problem with time windows for mobile charging vehicles (MTPCF-LRPwTW-MCVs), and formulate the MTPCF-LRPwTW-MCVs as a mixed integer linear program for the convenience of solving. To demonstrate the model, test instances are designed and computational results are presented. Furthermore, sensitivity analyses on battery capacity, recharging rate, and so on, are also examined. The results show that with the increase of the battery capacity or the improvement of the charging rate of the charging facilities, the service efficiency of the MCVs can reasonably be improved. Therefore, the proposed method could be used in real world problems.
Highlights
The increasing use of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and the deployment of charging stations will have an effect on the power system; Amini and Karabasoglu [5] studied the optimal operation of coupled electrified transportation and power networks
In this paper, we formulate this problem of operators as a location-routing problem (LRP), to integrate two decision levels with strategic level, and tactical level, and introduce the multiple types of plug-in charging facilities’ location-routing problem with time windows for mobile charging vehicles (MTPCF-LRPwTW-MCVs)
To the extent of our knowledge, until now, there has only been one study focused on the mobile charging service for BEVs, which was conducted by Huang et al [17]
Summary
It was shown that transportation was responsible for roughly 23% of the world-wide carbon dioxide emissions [1,2,3,4], stimulating the revolution of the transportation sector as a result of global climate change. Compared with conventional hybrid vehicles, BEVs have other advantages, such as energy efficiency and quiet operation, which make them ideal for urban areas [7]. Owing to their contribution to environmental protection, national governments have further popularized. In this paper, we formulate this problem of operators as a location-routing problem (LRP), to integrate two decision levels with strategic level (location), and tactical level (routing), and introduce the multiple types of plug-in charging facilities’ location-routing problem with time windows for mobile charging vehicles (MTPCF-LRPwTW-MCVs). The related studies and our contributions are presented
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