Final report: Workshop on: Integrating electric mobility systems with the grid infrastructure

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: This document is a report on the workshop entitled “Integrating Electric Mobility Systems with the Grid Infrastructure” which was held at Boston University on November 6-7 with the sponsorship of the Sloan Foundation. Its objective was to bring together researchers and technical leaders from academia, industry, and government in order to set a short and longterm research agenda regarding the future of mobility and the ability of electric utilities to meet the needs of a highway transportation system powered primarily by electricity. The report is a summary of their insights based on workshop presentations and discussions. The list of participants and detailed Workshop program are provided in Appendices 1 and 2. Public and private decisions made in the coming decade will direct profound changes in the way people and goods are moved and the ability of clean energy sources – primarily delivered in the form of electricity – to power these new systems. Decisions need to be made quickly because of rapid advances in technology, and the growing recognition that meeting climate goals requires rapid and dramatic action. The blunt fact is, however, that the pace of innovation, and the range of business models that can be built around these innovations, has grown at a rate that has outstripped our ability to clearly understand the choices that must be made or estimate the consequences of these choices. The group of people assembled for this Workshop are uniquely qualified to understand the options that are opening both in the future of mobility and the ability of electric utilities to meet the needs of a highway transportation system powered primarily by electricity. They were asked both to explain what is known about the choices we face and to define the research issues most urgently needed to help public and private decision-makers choose wisely. This report is a summary of their insights based on workshop presentations and discussions. New communication and data analysis tools have profoundly changed the definition of what is technologically possible. Cell phones have put powerful computers, communication devices, and position locators into the pockets and purses of most Americans making it possible for Uber, Lyft and other Transportation Network Companies to deliver on-demand mobility services. But these technologies, as well as technologies for pricing access to congested roads, also open many other possibilities for shared mobility services – both public and private – that could cut costs and travel time by reducing congestion. Options would be greatly expanded if fully autonomous vehicles become available. These new business models would also affect options for charging electric vehicles. It is unclear, however, how to optimize charging (minimizing congestion on the electric grid) without increasing congestion on the roads or creating significant problems for the power system that supports such charging capacity. With so much in flux, many uncertainties cloud our vision of the future. The way new mobility services will reshape the number, length of trips, and the choice of electric vehicle charging systems and constraints on charging, and many other important behavioral issues are critical to this future but remain largely unknown. The challenge at hand is to define plausible future structures of electric grids and mobility systems, and anticipate the direct and indirect impacts of the changes involved. These insights can provide tools essential for effective private ... [TRUNCATED]Workshop funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundatio

Developing Model Of Closed Loop Supply Chain Network For Subsidized Lpg 3-Kgs In East Java-Indonesia

Demand of subsidized LPG 3-kgs in Indonesia has been increasing since the Indonesian government imposed a conversion program from kerosene to Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) in 2007. The high increase in demand for subsidized LPG 3-kgs led to the scarcity of products availability. The design of a closed distribution system is required to ensure the availability of subsidized LPG 3-kgs. In this research, the development model of the integration of closed loop supply chain network and vehicle routing problem with simultaneous deliveries and pick-ups with time windows has been proposed. The mechanism of closed distribution system starts from the distributors send LPG empty tubes to filling stations. After filling station inspected and filled the LPG tubes, distributors delivered LPG 3-kgs subsidized from the filling station to some retailers. At the same time, the distributors take back the empty tubes from these retailers by considering the limitations of operational time in each retailers. The proposed model was tested on numerical example and analyzed the result

A satellite navigation system to improve the management of intermodal drayage

The intermodal transport chain can become more efficient by means of a good organization of the drayage movements. Drayage in intermodal container terminals involves the pick up or delivery of containers at customer locations, and the main objective is normally the assignment of transportation tasks to the different vehicles, often with the presence of time windows. The literature shows some works on centralised drayage management, but most of them consider the problem only from a static and deterministic perspective, whereas the work we present here incorporates the knowledge of the real-time position of the vehicles, which permanently enables the planner to reassign tasks in case the problem conditions change. This exact knowledge of position of the vehicles is possible thanks to a geographic positioning system by satellite (GPS, Galileo, Glonass), and the results show that this additional data can be used to dynamically improve the solution

Simulation Optimization Studies of Routing and Process Flow Problems

Computer aided simulation is emerging as a powerful tool for numerical analysis and in conducting performance evaluations of complex systems that depend on a multitude of variables. The primary objective in such simulation studies is to gauge the performance of the system under a various constraints and operating conditions. The effects of changing the operating parameter space can thus be analyzed without having to implement costly changes. Simulations are also carried out for the baseline scenarios to verity and validate the basic underlying system model. In this thesis research, two practical problems were studied through numerical modeling, and optimized solutions obtained for both. Optimizing the pick-up and delivery routes using a commercial software tool was the first task. Optimization of a production assembly line using a discrete event simulation tool was the second project that was carried out. The primary objective for the first task was to explore various routing scenarios and determine delivery routes that would minimize the total network mileage, while maintaining the pick-up time slots requested by the clients. A related task was to evaluate the possible advantages of centralizing all routing activity from a single site, instead of the two-hub scenario currently in effect. A total of eight different scenarios were studied as part of this effort. The second task involved optimization of the throughput of a fuel injector plant by placing buffers within the assembly lines for increased productivity

On green routing and scheduling problem

The vehicle routing and scheduling problem has been studied with much interest within the last four decades. In this paper, some of the existing literature dealing with routing and scheduling problems with environmental issues is reviewed, and a description is provided of the problems that have been investigated and how they are treated using combinatorial optimization tools

Determining departure times in dynamic and stochastic maritime routing and scheduling problem

In maritime transportation, decisions are made in a dynamic setting where many aspects of the future are uncertain. However, most academic literature on maritime transportation considers static and deterministic routing and scheduling problems. This work addresses a gap in the literature on dynamic and stochastic maritime routing and scheduling problems, by focusing on the scheduling of departure times. Five simple strategies for setting departure times are considered, as well as a more advanced strategy which involves solving a mixed integer mathematical programming problem. The latter strategy is significantly better than the other methods, while adding only a small computational effort

Analytical model for large-scale design of sidewalk delivery robot systems

With the rise in demand for local deliveries and e-commerce, robotic deliveries are being considered as efficient and sustainable solutions. However, the deployment of such systems can be highly complex due to numerous factors involving stochastic demand, stochastic charging and maintenance needs, complex routing, etc. We propose a model that uses continuous approximation methods for evaluating service trade-offs that consider the unique characteristics of large-scale sidewalk delivery robot systems used to serve online food deliveries. The model captures both the initial cost and the operation cost of the delivery system and evaluates the impact of constraints and operation strategies on the deployment. By minimizing the system cost, variables related to the system design can be determined. First, the minimization problem is formulated based on a homogeneous area, and the optimal system cost can be derived as a closed-form expression. By evaluating the expression, relationships between variables and the system cost can be directly obtained. We then apply the model in neighborhoods in New York City to evaluate the cost of deploying the sidewalk delivery robot system in a real-world scenario. The results shed light on the potential of deploying such a system in the future