Efficient techno-economic modelling of smart parking lots within the electricity distribution networks

The rapid uptake of electric vehicles is transforming public and workplace car parks into large, highly flexible electrical loads whose behaviour must be co-optimised with distribution network operation. Yet explicitly modelling every plugged-in vehicle makes even modest-sized studies computationall...

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Main Authors: Seyed Ashkan Nejati, David Greenwood, Sanchari Deb, Saman Nikkhah
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2025-09-01
Series:International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142061525004211
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author Seyed Ashkan Nejati
David Greenwood
Sanchari Deb
Saman Nikkhah
author_facet Seyed Ashkan Nejati
David Greenwood
Sanchari Deb
Saman Nikkhah
author_sort Seyed Ashkan Nejati
collection DOAJ
description The rapid uptake of electric vehicles is transforming public and workplace car parks into large, highly flexible electrical loads whose behaviour must be co-optimised with distribution network operation. Yet explicitly modelling every plugged-in vehicle makes even modest-sized studies computationally prohibitive and masks the economic tension between parking-lot owners and network operators. This paper proposes a cost-driven optimisation framework that converts a smart parking lot into an equivalent energy storage system, retaining hourly accuracy while collapsing thousands of binary charging decisions into a handful of continuous variables, allowing for the co-optimisation of the smart parking lot and the electricity distribution network. In the network, non-linear AC power-flow limits are convexified with second-order cone programming. At the same time, the discrete operating states of the SPL are handled by mixed-integer linear programming. To capture the multi-actor reality, separate objective functions represent (i) the distribution system operator’s operating cost and (ii) the smart parking lot owner’s profit, allowing for realistic price-signal interactions to emerge without resorting to heavyweight bi-level or game-theoretic solvers. The framework is first benchmarked on the classical IEEE 33-bus distribution network, augmented with photovoltaic, wind turbine, and conventional energy storage resources, and then stress-tested on a real 83-bus primary network from the UK, fed with arrival/departure and state-of-charge data for 200 real electric vehicles from the My Electric Avenue project.Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed model confirms that modelling smart parking lots as energy storage system equivalents unlocks their value to modern distribution networks while keeping optimisation complexity manageable.© 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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spelling doaj-art-d5deb683fcec4203b2acd929a7447c5f2025-08-20T03:03:46ZengElsevierInternational Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems0142-06152025-09-0117011087310.1016/j.ijepes.2025.110873Efficient techno-economic modelling of smart parking lots within the electricity distribution networksSeyed Ashkan Nejati0David Greenwood1Sanchari Deb2Saman Nikkhah3Corresponding author.; School of Engineering, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United KingdomSchool of Engineering, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United KingdomSchool of Engineering, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United KingdomSchool of Engineering, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United KingdomThe rapid uptake of electric vehicles is transforming public and workplace car parks into large, highly flexible electrical loads whose behaviour must be co-optimised with distribution network operation. Yet explicitly modelling every plugged-in vehicle makes even modest-sized studies computationally prohibitive and masks the economic tension between parking-lot owners and network operators. This paper proposes a cost-driven optimisation framework that converts a smart parking lot into an equivalent energy storage system, retaining hourly accuracy while collapsing thousands of binary charging decisions into a handful of continuous variables, allowing for the co-optimisation of the smart parking lot and the electricity distribution network. In the network, non-linear AC power-flow limits are convexified with second-order cone programming. At the same time, the discrete operating states of the SPL are handled by mixed-integer linear programming. To capture the multi-actor reality, separate objective functions represent (i) the distribution system operator’s operating cost and (ii) the smart parking lot owner’s profit, allowing for realistic price-signal interactions to emerge without resorting to heavyweight bi-level or game-theoretic solvers. The framework is first benchmarked on the classical IEEE 33-bus distribution network, augmented with photovoltaic, wind turbine, and conventional energy storage resources, and then stress-tested on a real 83-bus primary network from the UK, fed with arrival/departure and state-of-charge data for 200 real electric vehicles from the My Electric Avenue project.Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed model confirms that modelling smart parking lots as energy storage system equivalents unlocks their value to modern distribution networks while keeping optimisation complexity manageable.© 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142061525004211Smart parking lotDistribution networkEnergy storage system
spellingShingle Seyed Ashkan Nejati
David Greenwood
Sanchari Deb
Saman Nikkhah
Efficient techno-economic modelling of smart parking lots within the electricity distribution networks
International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems
Smart parking lot
Distribution network
Energy storage system
title Efficient techno-economic modelling of smart parking lots within the electricity distribution networks
title_full Efficient techno-economic modelling of smart parking lots within the electricity distribution networks
title_fullStr Efficient techno-economic modelling of smart parking lots within the electricity distribution networks
title_full_unstemmed Efficient techno-economic modelling of smart parking lots within the electricity distribution networks
title_short Efficient techno-economic modelling of smart parking lots within the electricity distribution networks
title_sort efficient techno economic modelling of smart parking lots within the electricity distribution networks
topic Smart parking lot
Distribution network
Energy storage system
url http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142061525004211
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AT samannikkhah efficienttechnoeconomicmodellingofsmartparkinglotswithintheelectricitydistributionnetworks