Agent-Based Information System for Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Deployment (Sweda and

Klabjan 2014)

The people are now concern about the environmental impacts of gasoline-powered vehicles since the
effects of global warming are now visible to many countries in the world, thus making the demand for
alternative-fuel vehicles (AFVs) increase over the past several years. An alternative fuel that is becoming
popular is Electricity, and the automakers are starting to put into the market the plug-in electric vehicle
(PEV) models that can be charged via the electrical grid. Three types of PEV are being developed: the plug-
in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), which is a hybrid of an electric vehicle that uses electricity as fuel and
a gasoline-powered vehicle, thus can be run using the two kinds of fuel. The second type is the battery
electric vehicle (BEVs) which run using electricity alone. The third type is the hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs)
which is somewhat the same with PHEVs but cannot be connected to the electrical grid. A threat for the
PEVs usefulness is the lack of charging infrastructure. Even though the PEV can be charged at home,
consumers are discouraged to use PEV in a long-distance travel due to lack of charging infrastructure,
unlike the gasoline-powered vehicle in which gasoline stations are widely available. As a result, charging
infrastructure became a key for a mass household adoption of PEVs.

The investors of charging infrastructure are hesitant due to the lack of knowledge regarding the PEV
demand realization. The investors are hesitant because building a charging infrastructure costs a lot of
money and resources, and if these infrastructures are underutilized and dont generate that much of
revenue, the payback time for the investors would be too long and will discourage future investments in
the project to materialize.

In this paper, agent-based information system is used to identify the patterns of ownership of PEV in
residential sector to create a strategic deployment of new charging infrastructure. The driver agents travel
from the houses to their work, and to other destinations. Their activities are being monitored in a street
level giving way to a small-scale simulation. The drivers always change their vehicle between a
conventional type vehicle that use gasoline as fuel, and an electric vehicle depending on the necessity that
is influenced by the kind of activity, the demographic information, the rates of electricity at a specific time
and the location of charging stations.

This paper was able to contribute on the following: (1) a simulation model of the drivers where they
change into the different types of EV technologies given both at-home and public charging options; (2) a
study about the effect of having charging infrastructure to the demand of people to use PEVs; (3) a
detailed modeling in driving using an EV context; (4) lastly is the study of the adoption trends of different
EV options at the time when all of the three types, the PHEV, BEV, and the HEV, are all available in the
market. The competition between different manufacturers of AFVs are not included in the study, thus
assuming that only one car manufacturer is the source of all EV in the environment.

The model wants to obtain the activities and decisions of the individual drivers who has purchasing
capability of EVs. The ABM represents the drivers, and these agents has the capability to influence his
neighbors who also can purchase EV. The Agent-based approach was chosen among the other alternatives
because it enables to create an interaction together with spatial information, both influences the decision-
making capability of the consumers, and they can react with this. The social interactions of the
neighborhood and their co-workers are included in the modeling, where possible only through the use of
spatial modeling. All agents are in an environment where they have their own houses where they live;
workplaces; and other destinations which can be also a charging stations. This kind of setup allows a more
realistic simulation compared to a grid-based environment.

The houses and their workplaces are randomly selected using the density functions which is based on the
data from the U.S. Census at other sources. The locations of the charging stations together with the nodes
of the road network are already given. These facts are assumed fixed in the entire simulation and no
variable can change. The agents are also not allowed to change their houses. As the agents travel from its
home to its destinations, it finds the node in the road network that is nearest to its home and to its
destination, thus finding the shortest path possible towards his destination.

The agent has different characteristics which are governed by the attributes set in the model, these are
the income, preferred vehicle class that can be compact, midsize, luxury, or SUV, at greenness, in which
are all the same in the entire simulation. The greenness attribute represents the environmental concern
of the driver. In this simulation, the greenness attribute is the additional amount that the driver is willing
to pay to purchase an EV instead of a conventional vehicle. Each agent also is given a vehicle with initial
age and a terminal age wherein the vehicle should be replaced. The maintenance cost is not considered
in this model, thats why it is just assumed that the driver already knows when to replace his/her vehicle.

Figure 1. EV ownership with different gasoline price

The results of this study are shown in the figures. Figure 1 shows the EV ownership at different gasoline
price. It can be seen in the graphs that as the gasoline price increases, the EV adoption increases. This
means that at higher gasoline prices, more drivers are encouraged to use an EV particularly the HEV
(Hybrid electric vehicle).

Figure 2. EV ownership at different factor of greenness.

Figure 2 shows the EV ownership at different factor of greenness. The greenness represents the
environmental concern of drivers, and it can be seen in figure 2 that if a driver is concern that much to
its environment, the greenness factor is high, giving a high adoption rate of EVs. Figure 3 shows the EV
ownership at different factor of social influence. Social influence is the opposite of greenness. Social
influence means that the driver is being discouraged by its neighbors to use electric vehicle. Therefore a
high value of social influence gives lower adoption rate of EV.
Figure 3. EV ownership at different factors of social influence.