A scenario-based stochastic programming approach for the public charging station location problem

This paper presents an integrated framework for the optimal planning of public charging stations for plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) in urban areas. The framework consists of two main components: (i) an out-of-home charging demand model based on an activity-based travel demand model, and (ii) a public charging station location-allocation model using a scenario-based stochastic programming (SP) approach. In order to capture the dynamic charging behaviour of PEV users, a chi-squared automatic interaction detector (CHAID)-based mixed effects decision tree is induced from multi-day activity diaries. Moreover, because the stochastic error of the micro-simulation approach brings about uncertainty, we adopted a two-stage stochastic mixed-integer programming (TSMIP) model, which measures uncertainty by means of a finite set of scenarios obtained from the derived decision rules underlying PEV charging. The proposed approach is demonstrated for the City of Eindhoven, The Netherlands, and benefits of the stochastic solution are discussed.