An exact approach for the charging station location selection problem in urban freight transport

Abstract The necessity to reduce emissions in the transport sector has led to the advancement of electromobility. Nowadays, electromobility is developing rapidly in the urban freight transport sector. This helps to reduce the environmental footprint of transport, given the large portion of emissions that originate from the freight transport sector. However, the use of EV fleets for freight transport has some limitations, such as autonomy, charging delays, and lack of charging infrastructure. In this study, focus is given on the problem of finding the optimal locations for charging stations of electric transport vehicles for freight transport, within an urban network. The installation of charging stations is a major issue, as it is necessary to identify the optimal locations of installation points in order to improve the delivery of products and reduce the empty vehicle kilometers driven for charging purposes. This study formulates the charging station location selection problem aiming at minimizing the empty kilometers driven to reach the charging stations, taking into consideration the destinations of truck deliveries. The developed model is an Integer Linear Program that can be effectively solved to global optimality for realistic problem instances. Further, sensitivity analysis is employed to identify specific factors with significant impact on the location decision of charging stations. Computational experiments are performed on modified benchmark problem instances, that demonstrate the scalability of the proposed modeling approach and the sensitivity of the model to the changes of different factors.