Sharing the electric bus charging stations by scheduling the charging strategy

Abstract

Electric cars (ECs) play a vital role in reducing carbon emissions and improving sustainable development. Due to the lack of public charging facilities, the application of private ECs is limited. Motivated by the sharing economy, this is the first study to investigate the idea of sharing electric bus (EB) charging stations to alleviate the plight of private EC owners. However, existing EB charging strategies do not cater to the sharing and hinder the implementation of the policy. Therefore, this paper proposed a general mathematic mixed-integer non-linear programming model to coordinate the optimal charging strategy and sharing operation to meet the external and internal goals of bus systems, namely, maximizing charging station availability and satisfying the EB charging demand. Harnessing real-world bus operating data, the proposed model effectively generates multiple charging strategies. The results show that some hybrid strategies can achieve a similar sharing availability period as the public-oriented strategy with lower costs. In addition, sensitivity analysis indicates that increasing battery capacity can extend the sharing availability period while increasing charging power has only a minor impact. Overall, the proposed model obtains desired charging scheduling and provides concrete suggestions to promote the sustainable development of ECs and EBs.