Optimal parking lot retrofit planning for electric vehicle charging station during prolonged load shedding

Abstract

The rapidly increasing demand for electric vehicle (EV) charging drives the transition from conventional parking lots into charging stations. This transition, however, faces challenges in countries of Africa, Asia, and South America, where prolonged load shedding results in an unreliable power supply. This study addresses the optimal parking lot retrofit planning for EV charging stations, aiming to determine an ideal number of charging poles to be deployed within parking lots under prolonged load shedding. A multi-objective optimization approach is introduced to balance financial return and user satisfaction, generating Pareto-optimal solutions for charging stations. The impact of load shedding on the optimal retrofit planning is analyzed. Post-outage demand peaks substantially increase the maximum demand costs. The proposed charging scheduling method achieves a 14% reduction in maximum demand costs. The proposed parking lot retrofit planning approach improves weekly profit by 19% and user satisfaction by 14% compared to the existing planning approach. Additionally, this study investigates the implications of load shedding uncertainty, EV penetration rate, charging pole type, and time-of-use pricing on the optimal retrofit planning.