Allocation of charging stations in an electric vehicle network using simulation optimization

Growing concerns with environmental issues have led to the consideration of alternatives to urban mobility. Among available options, electric vehicles have been considered in advantage in terms of sustainability as well as emission of pollutants. This work presents an optimized solution to allocate electric charging stations based on a simplified traffic model for urban mobility and vehicles´ energy consumption. It is particularly interesting for prototypes and initial studies on deploying charging stations. A discrete event simulation is built in Arena and an optimization is implemented with OptQuest package. The simulation model considers stochastic information whose characterization is difficult to obtain for particular cases. The results show that there are several variables that can be correctly determined to avoid prohibitive costs in the deployment of charging stations.