Optimal placement of electric vehicle slow-charging stations: A continuous facility location problem under uncertainty

Electric vehicles (EVs) are becoming a key mechanism to reduce emissions in the transportation industry, and hence contribute to the green transition. In this paper, we present a mathematical programming model which determines the optimal placement of EV charging stations such that chargers are placed in the most cost-efficient way possible for all stakeholders, assuming additionally that EV charging demand is inherently stochastic in nature. The model is formulated as a two-stage, continuous location–allocation model in the form of a generalised Weber problem in two dimensions. However, this formulation is non-convex and notoriously difficult to solve. We therefore propose a suitable discretisation procedure to find high quality solutions in suitable time. The discretisation procedure shows strong performance across a variety of computational experiments using randomly generated scenarios, maintaining robustness in terms of the objective value and overall solution quality.<br/><br/>A part of this solution procedure was entered into the 15th AIMMS-MOPTA Optimisation Modelling Competition.