Bi-level programming model approach for electric vehicle charging stations considering user charging costs

The rapid development of electric vehicles (EV) has placed greater demands on the planning and construction of public electric vehicle charging stations (EVCS). As EV users are highly autonomous in their charging behavior, the interests of investors and EV users are mutually affected and challenging to balance. Therefore, this paper proposes a bi-level planning model to balance the interests of investors and EV users and optimize global economic costs while improving the service satisfaction of users. The upper-level model aims to optimize the economic cost. In contrast, the lower-level model aims to optimize the service satisfaction of EV users and characterizes the charging satisfaction of EV users through the costs of charging queuing time, distance traveled, desired to charge volume, and actual charging volume, to more accurately reflect the autonomy of EV users. A combination of fast and slow charging piles is also used for planning to meet the needs of different users and improve charging stations' operational efficiency. Finally, a case study is conducted in an area of Beijing to verify that the optimization model has the advantages of low global economic cost, short charging queuing time for users, and high service satisfaction.