Research on hierarchical and zoning planning framework for urban electric vehicle charging facilities

The rapid increase in the number of electric vehicles (EVs) and the emergence of new charging facility operation models have posed significant challenges to the service capacity of urban public EV charging infrastructure. This study proposes a hierarchical and zoned planning framework for urban EV charging facilities in the context of rapid EV development. For private EV charging demands, a lower-level zoning planning model is established. This model considers the distribution of parking lots and their capacity constraints across different functional zones. The objective is to minimize the combined cost of constructing and operating charging facilities and the penalty costs incurred due to unmet charging demands. The model determines the optimal allocation of charging facilities within parking lots in each functional zone. To address the unmet charging demands of private EVs and the fast charging demands of commercial EVs, an upper-level planning model including double layers for fast charging stations is developed. The outer layer focuses on site selection by balancing the interests of station operators and users, while the inner layer configures station capacity based on queuing theory. An improved particle swarm optimization algorithm is used to identify the siting and sizing scheme that minimizes the total comprehensive cost. Finally, a case study is presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed hierarchical and zoning planning framework.