A Reinforcement Learning-Based Strategy for the Optimal Placement of Electric Vehicle Charging Stations in Smart City for Urban Planning

In this paper, we present a reinforcement learning (RL)-based strategy for placing optimal charging stations (CS) of electric vehicles (EVs) in the case of Urban planning and smart city development under digital twin. The objective is to minimize the energy required by EVs to reach the CS for recharging. Our approach shows the efficacy of computationally identified CS placement over random placement. Extensive research has demonstrated that an RL-based strategy yields better results in identifying suitable CS locations than random positioning. Based on our investigation, the proposed method finds the most effective positions and some alternative locations for the placement of CS. This study presents a novel approach with $\mathbf{2 0. 9 7 \%}$ enhancement in energy efficiency compared to related research findings. Furthermore, our proposed approach demonstrates expedited attainment of an optimal policy, outperforming existing literature.