Electric vehicle charging infrastructure planning for integrated transportation and power distribution networks: A review

Environmental concerns and urban air pollution are major drivers for the transition from combustion engines to electric vehicles. To support a large-scale adoption of electric vehicles an efficient charging infrastructure roll-out is required. However, the optimal planning of charging stations is a non-trivial task, as it requires coordination between planning activities in the transportation and the power distribution network. Historically, the modeling of these two networks has been approached from different research areas and with the use of different methodologies. As a result, few papers embrace the combined problem to its full extent and the literature is highly scattered and represents different model perspectives and the targeting of many different objectives. In the paper, we present a systematic review of the literature that considers the combined investigation of transportation and distribution networks, with a focus on objectives, methodology and scope. It allows us to describe the current state of the art, to highlight research gaps and to propose directions for future work of the research community. The identified research gaps include, but are not limited to: 1) a general lack of integrated modeling approaches, 2) the need for increasingly detailed modeling of charging demand that accounts for randomness and variability in space and time rather than averages to support power grid planning, 3) the need to consider a mix of different types of charging options rather than only fast charging and 4) the need to shift from standard test networks and theoretical based planning approaches to large-scale and real-world case studies.