Modeling and Simulation of Electric Vehicles Charging Services by a Time Colored Petri Net Framework

The transport sector is responsible for about 60% of emissions in the atmosphere due to the exhaust-polluting gases of internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. An effective solution to this issue is the electrification of the transport means, which can significantly reduce pollution, especially in urban areas. Apart from the necessary technological advancements that must improve the battery performances, the diffusion of electric vehicles (EVs) must be further supported and facilitated by new dedicated services and tools for electric vehicle users and operators aiming at improving the travel and charging experience. To this goal, this paper proposes new models based on Timed Colored Petri Nets (TCPN) to simulate and manage the charge demand of the EV fleet. At first, the proposed tool must take into account the charging requests from different EV drivers with different charging need located in different geographical areas. This is possible by knowing input data such as EV current location, battery data, charge points (CPs) availability, and compatibility. In particular, EV drivers are simulated when finding and booking the preferred charge option according to the available infrastructure in the area of interest and the CPs tariff and power rate. The proposed TCPN is designed to model the multi-user charging demand in specific geographic areas, and it is evaluated in several scenarios of a case study to measure its performance in serving multiple EV users.