An optimization location scheme for electric charging stations

Due to environmental issues, electric mobility is one of the mobility alternatives that are receiving a huge attention nowadays. In fact, in the last few years electric vehicles have entered the world´s car market. This revolutionary technology requires a fast deployment of electric charging stations since the key issue in this system is recharging the batteries. In this work, we propose an optimized algorithm to locate electric-vehicles charging stations. Different factors and limitations are considered and a real case study is given as an application. We first determine the appropriate strict constraints and cost of charging stations´ location; and then we propose a mathematical formulation of the problem before solving it using our optimized algorithm named OLoCs (Optimized Location Scheme for electric charging stations). This latter is a heuristic solution; in which we adapt a genetic algorithm to solve the charging stations´ location problem. We add a new operator to the classical genetic algorithm to prevent premature convergence and improve the efficiency of the algorithm. OLoCs determines the necessary number of charging stations and their best opening placement. Finally, we evaluate OLoCs performances by analyzing its convergence time and depicting the graphic placement results on a studied map.