Optimal Planning of Dynamic Wireless Charging Infrastructure for Electric Vehicles

The market share of electric vehicles (EVs) is increasing due to their low greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and reduced running costs. However, range anxiety and charging downtime are some challenges slowing down the adoption of this new technology. Dynamic wireless charging (DWC) aims to minimize the problems above by allowing the EVs to charge while in motion. With DWC, optimizing the locations of the lanes is crucial to maximizing their utilization while minimizing the capital and operational expenditure of the system. Additionally, the extra load that DWC incurs on the power grid must be considered to avoid grid overload. In this work, a realistic traffic simulation is built. A new methodology is proposed to optimally deploy DWC lanes in the simulated road network and allocate distributed generation (DG) resources to support the power grid. The model is implemented for a large road network within Sharjah, UAE. Results reveal that, for a 30% EV penetration level, a DWC system is economically feasible and profitable to deploy to address the anticipated EV charging demand within the traffic network under consideration.