Electrification of Motorway Network: A Methodological Approach to Define Location of Charging Infrastructure for EV

Abstract

Environmental issues have reached global attention from both political and social perspectives. Many countries and companies around the world are adopting measures to help change current trends. Awareness of decarbonization in the transportation sector has led to an increasing development of energy storage systems in recent years, especially for ground vehicles. Batteries, due to their high efficiency, are one of the most attractive energy storage systems for vehicle propulsion. As for road vehicles, the growing interest in Electric Vehicles (EVs) is motivated by the fact that they reduce local emissions compared to traditional Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles. The purpose of the paper is to present a study on how to plan and implement vehicle charging infrastructure on motorways. In particular, a specific road in Italy is analyzed: the motorway A1 from Milan to Naples with a length of about 800 km. This motorway can be considered representative because it passes through some of Italy’s most important cities and regions and may represent the backbone of Italy. A useful model for defining the optimal location of electric vehicle charging stations is presented within the paper. Starting with the data on the average daily traffic flows passing through the main nodes of the motorways section, the demand for the potential vehicles needed to define the number and dimension of charging stations and provide an adequate supply is estimated. The analysis was performed considering five-time horizons (year 2022 to year 2025) and four Scenarios involving the installation of 4, 8, 16, and 32 Charging Stations (CSs) in each service area, respectively.