CAEE Seminar - Promoting Plug-In Electric Vehicles: Optimization-Based Decision-Making Framework
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering and Dr. Lili Du will be hosting a seminar featuring Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University, Dr. Yu (Marco) Nie. The topic of the seminar will be Promoting Plug-In Electric Vehicles: Optimization-Based Decision-Making Framework.
Earn Engineering Themes Credit in Energy for Attending this Seminar
Abstract
High purchase prices and the lack of supporting infrastructure are major hurdles to the adoption of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs). It is widely recognized that the government could help break these barriers through incentive policies, such as offering rebates to PEV buyers or help building charging stations. This talk will present optimization models that aim to support the design of these policies. In particular I will consider two classes of decision-making problems arising in the context: (1) policy makers' strategic decision, such as incentive programs and regulation policies and (2) infrastructure planners' tactical decision, such as configuration of charging stations. For the first problem, an optimization model is proposed to characterize the impact of the incentive policies on the dynamic evolution of PEV market penetration over a discrete set of time intervals, by integrating a simplified consumer vehicle choice model and a macroscopic travel and charging model. The optimization problem is formulated as a nonlinear and non-convex mathematical program and solved by a specialized steepest descent direction algorithm. For the second problem, various facility location models are developed to optimally configure networks of charging stations to support intracity and intercity travel by PEV. These models will differentiate intracity and intercity travel based on whether demand for charging station is represented as a point or a trip between an origin-destination pair.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Marco Nie received his B.S. in Structural Engineering from Tsinghua University, his M.S. from National University of Singapore and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis. Dr. Nie’s research covers a variety of topics in the areas of transportation systems analysis, transportation economics, sustainable transportation and traffic flow theory and simulation. Dr. Nie is a member of the TRB committee on Transportation Network Modeling (ADB30), TRB committee on Traffic Flow Theory and Characteristics (AHB45). He also serves as an associated editor for Transportation Science and Networks and Spatial Economics, and is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for Transpormetrica-B and Transportation Research Part B. Dr. Nie’s research has been supported by National Science Foundation, Transportation Research Board, US Department of Transportation, and Illinois Department of Transportation.