Modelling Electric Vehicle Charging Network Capacity and Evacuation Route Capacity During Short-Notice Events

Date
2020-04-30
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Abstract

Electric vehicles (EVs) may add new challenges during mass evacuations, both in the pre-departure and post-departure stage of a mass evacuation. The objective of this research is to better understand the magnitude of the impacts EVs may have during mass evacuations. Two models were created to examine the impacts pre-departure and post-departure. To determine pre-departure impacts, a G/G/c/N queueing model to estimate the number of vehicles that can be charged pre-departure during an evacuation was created. The outputs of this model are the number of vehicles that have or have not been served during the evacuation period, as well as average queue times and maximum queue lengths. To determine the post-departure impacts, a microscopic traffic simulation using SUMO was created to estimate the additional delay added by EVs that have stalled from lack of fuel. The outputs of this model are the number of vehicles that stall before reaching their destination, and the additional delay to other evacuees incurred as a result of those stalled EVs. The city of Prince George, British Columbia, was used as a case study with the goal of providing insights generalizable to other locations. Policy recommendations that could mitigate some of the negative impacts of EVs during mass evacuations were provided. It was found that for the present-day case of Prince George, there is not enough charging network capacity to service all vehicles before departure. Increasing the number of charging stations, providing earlier evacuation notices, and ensuring that there is a balanced makeup of level 3 fast-charging of different types were all found to be effective in increasing the number of EVs that received adequate charging before departure. It was found that although the delays incurred by stalled EVs on other evacuees were minor, a large number of EVs stalled from running out of fuel en route to their destination. Decreasing the spacing between charging stations along evacuation routes and increasing the capacity of EV charging stations networks at the origin location can reduce the number of EVs that stall en route to their destination.

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Keywords
Electric vehicles, charging networks, evacuations, wildfire evacuations, mass evacuations, traffic simulation, stalled vehicles
Citation
MacDonald, C. (2020). Modelling Electric Vehicle Charging Network Capacity and Evacuation Route Capacity During Short-Notice Events (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.