Coordinated Planning Strategy for Electric Vehicle Charging Stations and Coupled Traffic-Electric Networks

The proliferation of electric vehicles (EVs) calls for an effective planning of charging stations by coupling the transportation network (TN) with the power distribution network (PDN). This paper conducts an interdisciplinary study on the coordinated planning strategy of EV charging stations in a coupled traffic-electric network. A comprehensive planning model is proposed, which determines the optimal expansion strategies for both TN and PDN, including sites and sizes of new charging stations, charging spots, TN lanes, and PDN lines. In TN, we use an unconstrained traffic assignment model (UTAM) to explicitly capture the steady-state distribution of traffic flows. In PDN, operating conditions are described by a linearized DistFlow. Moreover, EV charging demands and interdependency of TN and PDN are characterized by EV charging station location model. To retrieve a global optimal solution, an equivalent mixed-integer linear programming model with UTAM constraints is formulated for the coordinated planning model. Numerical experiments on coupled traffic-electric networks are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed model and the solution method.