1. Introduction¶
Electric vehicle infrastructure refers to the charging infrastructure needed to support the use electric vehicles for short and long trips. Charging can be done at home overnight, if a charging point or station is available in the owner’s parking. Home charging can be supplemented by workplace charging when charging stations are installed at workplaces. While most charging happens at home or at the workplace, there is still a need for public charging stations for people taking long distance trips and for people who do not have access to home or workplace charging. Public charging infrastructure can also help with range anxiety, which is the fear of being stranded without charge. Evidence suggests that a network of charging stations available for public use can help in alleviating range anxiety and make more long distance trips feasible. To be useful in a long-distance trip, public charging station should also support fast charging. Fast charging from a station allows for shorter charging breaks for customers and provides the charging station a capability to serve more vehicles during a day. Fast charging stations, though preferred, are costlier in terms of the capital investment as well as operational cost. It is therefore vital to find locations for the fast charging stations such that they have high potential utilization.
The proposed decision support system (ChargEval) uses a combination of models to estimate the fast charger utilization. The utilization is dependent on several factors including EV fleet size, charging propensity etc. The utilization can be fed to the economic model of the charging station, that takes into account the fixed and variable costs of installing and operating a charging station. With the use of the proposed decision support system, public agencies and private companies can evaluate the feasibility of a set of charging station candidate sites and compare multiple siting scenarios.