The Critical Role of Public Charging Infrastructure

Editors: Peter Fox-Penner, PhD, Z. Justin Ren, PhD, David O. JermainA decade after the launch of the contemporary global electric vehicle (EV) market, most cities face a major challenge preparing for rising EV demand. Some cities, and the leaders who shape them, are meeting and even leading demand for EV infrastructure. This book aggregates deep, groundbreaking research in the areas of urban EV deployment for city managers, private developers, urban planners, and utilities who want to understand and lead change

Electric vehicle charging network in Europe: An accessibility and deployment trends analysis

If coupled with a low-carbon electricity mix, electric vehicles (EVs) can represent an important technology for transport decarbonization and local pollutants abatement. Yet, to ensure large-scale EVs adoption, an adequate charging stations network must be developed. This paper provides the first comprehensive bottom-up analysis of the EV charging network in Europe. Combining a crowd-sourced database of charging stations with accessibility data and algorithms, we produce maps of the travel time to the most accessible EV charging station across Europe, we evaluate the charging points density and the number of active operators in different areas. We find that although recent years have witnessed a notable expansion of the EV charging network, stark inequalities persist across and within countries, both in terms of accessibility and of the charging points available to users. Our results allow for a better understanding of some of the key challenges ahead for ensuring mass EVs adoption throughout Europe and thus potentially reducing the environmental impact of the transport sector

Taking Tennessee Electric with a Private Vehicle Charging Market: An EV Infrastructure Policy for Conservative States

The transition from petroleum to electricity as a fuel source for vehicles is an essential step in the effort to stop harmful climate change. The transportation sector currently produces more carbon emissions in the United States than any other area. Recognizing this, the federal government and several states have recently devoted resources to facilitating the transition to large-scale electric vehicle (EV) use. In particular, there must be a nationwide network of EV charging infrastructure so that EV drivers can confidently drive EVs anywhere. Much of the legal research on increasing the number of EV charging facilities and consumer EV purchases focuses on states and areas where support of EVs is more likely, dismissing conservative-leaning Southeastern states, some Midwestern states, and rural areas as places where people “do not recognize climate change as a problem.” However, it is not enough to successfully prepare for and achieve mass EV adoption in liberal states. To sufficiently reduce US carbon emissions, the transition to EV use must be widespread across all states and regions, types of communities, and demographics. If environmentalists want to reduce emissions as much as possible in today’s polarized political environment, they must take a new approach to creating policy solutions. Instead of pushing large-scale, public EV projects across the board, policy makers should tailor state-level policy proposals that specifically appeal to conservative-leaning states. They should incorporate conservatives’ preferred instrument choices-—namely, private businesses-—as the drivers of EV infrastructure growth. While some environmentalists may prefer government-driven climate action, a privatized system of EV charging infrastructure will be more likely and more easily adopted by both governments and consumers in conservative states. In the context of climate change, decarbonizing the transportation sector as quickly as possible is more important than the policy tool used to do it; therefore, choosing a politically feasible policy is the best strategy. With this approach in mind, this Note proposes specific policies that enable and support the growth of privately owned charging station businesses within the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) region. Using Tennessee as a case study, this Note first explains how the TVA Act and state law would grant TVA a monopoly on the EV charging market in Tennessee. It then proposes changes to state and federal law that could remove the legal barriers to privately owned charging station businesses in the TVA region. Lastly, this Note argues that allowing a private EV charging market will increase conservative Tennessee’s EV charging capabilities and encourage the purchase of EVs by Tennessee consumers

AI Enabled Crypto Mining for Electric Vehicle Systems

A virtual grid (VG) is an interconnected system that includes a decentralized power plant, flexible loads, and energy storage facilities. During peak demand, a VG can distribute the power provided by several interconnected units in an equitable manner, ensuring that the grid burden is spread out evenly. Electric vehicles (EVs) and other demand-side energy devices can help keep the energy market supply and demand in harmony with proper use. However, it might be difficult to maintain a consistent power balance due to the inherent unpredictability of the power units. Furthermore, the issue of protecting the privacy of communications between a VPP aggregator and the final facilities has not been thoroughly explored. In this paper, we provided detailed analytics on optimization-based crypto mining for electric vehicle systems. The simulation is conducted to test the efficacy of the model, and the results show that the proposed method has a higher rate of accuracy than other methods

Smart charging strategies for electric vehicle charging stations

Although the concept of transportation electrification holds enormous prospects in addressing the global environmental pollution problem, consumer concerns over the limited availability of charging stations and long charging/waiting times are major contributors to the slow uptake of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) in many countries. To address the consumer concerns, many countries have undertaken projects to deploy a network of both fast and slow charging stations, commonly known as electric vehicle charging networks. While a large electric vehicle charging network will certainly be helpful in addressing PEV owners\u27 concerns, the full potential of this network cannot be realised without the implementation of smart charging strategies. For example, the charging load distribution in an EV charging network would be expected to be skewed towards stations located in hotspot areas, instigating longer queues and waiting times in these areas, particularly during afternoon peak traffic hours. This can also lead to a major challenge for the utilities in the form of an extended PEV charging load period, which could overlap with residential evening peak load hours, increasing peak demand and causing serious issues including network instability and power outages. This thesis presents a smart charging strategy for EV charging networks. The proposed smart charging strategy finds the optimum charging station for a PEV owner to ensure minimum charging time, travel time and charging cost. The problem is modelled as a multi-objective optimisation problem. A metaheuristic solution in the form of ant colony optimisation (ACO) is applied to solve the problem. Considering the influence of pricing on PEV owners\u27 behaviour, the smart charging strategy is then extended to address the charging load imbalance problem in the EV network. A coordinated dynamic pricing model is presented to reduce the load imbalance, which contributes to a reduction in overlaps between residential and charging loads. A constraint optimization problem is formulated and a heuristic solution is introduced to minimize the overlap between the PEV and residential peak load periods. In the last part of this thesis, a smart management strategy for portable charging stations (PCSs) is introduced. It is shown that when smartly managed, PCSs can play an important role in the reduction of waiting times in an EV charging network. A new strategy is proposed for dispatching/allocating PCSs during various hours of the day to reduce waiting times at public charging stations. This also helps to decrease the overlap between the total PEV demand and peak residential load

Adoption of green fleets: An economic and environmental life cycle assessment of light duty electric vehicle fleets

This study assesses regional characteristics of fleet vehicles within New England calculating total cost of ownership (TCO) and greenhouse gas (GHG). Inventory for battery electric vehicles (BEV), extended mileage battery electric vehicles (BEV+), plug in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV), hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) and internal combustion vehicles (ICV) light duty fleet vehicles is based on New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services (NHDES) fleet characteristics. This analysis was conducted using empirical data from the State of New Hampshire and University of New Hampshire fleets, ISO-New England (ISO-NE) grid data, and peer reviewed literature to capture the impacts of regional driving characteristics, energy grid, and climate. With 2019 gasoline and electricity prices, results show the HEV has the lowest lifetime TCO, $2,709.88 less than the second lowest vehicle. The PHEV is shown to cost$1,082.86 dollars less than the ICV while the BEVs total costs are $233.65 greater. All vehicle technologies show major reductions in fuel and operations and maintenance (O&M) costs compared to the ICV, specifically under the high mileage of State of New Hampshire fleet vehicles. The BEV shows the largest GHG abatement potential by emitting .17kg/mile CO2e, representing a 54% decrease below the ICV. This study indicates both PHEVs and BEVs are cost competitive with ICVs while providing substantial GHG emission abatement while the HEV is determined to have the lowest TCO amongst all vehicles along with 33% GHG abatement

The Challenge of a Sustainable E-Commerce Supply Chain

Treballs Finals del Màster en Oficial en Empresa Internacional / International Business, Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2020-2021, Tutor: Guillermo Oliva GalvánThe rapid rise of e-commerce in recent years challenges companies to cope with unprecedented parcel volumes and also to comply with their sustainability goals. In the literature exists a variety of recommendations for sustainable measures along the supply chain. The aim of this thesis was to demonstrate the extent to which sustainable warehousing measures are used in practice and whether these are sufficient for environmental protection. A qualitative research approach was chosen, including a case study of a leading logistics company. The results showed that the emissions of the increasing global transport activities cannot yet be compensated by the sustainability efforts of today. Low business incentives and high complexity of sustainability practices are obstacles. Ultimately, a sustainable trend reversal can only succeed if technological progress is not only used to expand e-commerce business models but also to design innovative, cost-effective, and simple-to-implement solutions in the future

Trends in electric vehicles research

Electrification of vehicles has been recognised as a key part of meeting global climate change targets and a key aspect of sustainable transport. Here, an integrative and bird\u27s-eye view of scholarly research on Electric Vehicles (EV) is provided with a focus on an objective and quantitative determination of research trends. The analyses suggest that areas of EV research linked to (i) charging infrastructure, (ii) EV adoption, (iii) thermal management systems and (iv) routing problem have been the distinct trending topics in recent years. While hybrid EV proves to have been a dominant keyword, its frequency of use has either flattened out in recent years or is notably on the decline across major subfields of EV research. The findings provide objective indications about the directions to which EV research is currently headed. A secondary outcome is the determination of references that have been most instrumental in developing each major stream of EV research