Coordinated Management of Mobile Charging Stations and Community Energy Storage for Electric Vehicle Charging

Abstract

Widespread adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) largely relies on the availability of a charging infrastructure. However, the significant installation costs, need for appropriate locations, congestion and lengthy queues at public fixed charging station (FCS), and the potential strain on the grid hinder the expansion of the charging station network, particularly in urban areas. To address these shortcomings associated with FCSs, mobile charging stations (MCSs) can be used as a supplementary solution. To this end, an optimization framework that incorporates FCSs and MCSs is proposed to meet the spatiotemporally distributed EV charging demands. A community energy storage system (CESS) is integrated into the system to enhance the flexibility and increase the use of renewable energy in EV charging. When the EV charging requests are received, the proposed framework determines the optimal charging technology and location for each charging demand by taking charging site and time preferences of EV users into account. The simulation studies and comparative analyses demonstrate that the proposed framework enhances benefits for both the operators and EV users, achieving a 90 % reduction in carbon emissions and reducing waiting times at FCSs to zero. Further analyses confirm its effectiveness across various conditions, leading to substantial reductions in emissions and costs, particularly in larger systems. Compared to an MCS scheduling method based on EV clustering, the proposed framework achieves lower emissions while slightly increasing battery degradation.