A Stochastic Program for Siting and Sizing Fast Charging Stations and Small Wind Turbines in Urban Areas

Small wind turbines (SWTs) are promoted to be used in urban areas to mitigate the carbon footprint and expensive upgrades expected from high penetration levels of fast charging stations (FCSs). In this paper, a planning framework is proposed to amplify the total benefit for the owners of FCSs and SWTs as well as local distribution companies (LDCs). A stochastic program is developed to site and size SWTs along with FCSs in urban and suburban areas considering their specific wind characteristics, statutory regulations, turbine clustering studies, and geographic constraints. A worthiness metric is also proposed to rank FCS candidate locations based on their attractiveness to electric-vehicle (EV) drivers. An electric distribution network is overlaid onto a geographic map of downtown Chicago to assess the introduced planning framework. Results show that new efficient SWTs in urban areas can realistically justify their own investments over the long-term, and reduce the overall system losses and support FCS loads. In the case study presented, the investments yield a present value of $15M in profit, in 20 years, with an investment of $23M-only $6M of which is capital due in year one, while the rest consists of annual operation and maintenance costs.

Automated summary

This paper proposes a planning framework for siting and sizing SWTs and FCSs in urban and suburban areas considering specific factors, and introduces a metric to rank the attractiveness of FCS candidate locations. Results show that efficient SWTs in urban areas can justify their investments in the long-term, reduce overall system losses, and support FCS loads.