Selecting optimal location for electric recharging stations with queue

Dominance of fossil fuels in the transportation sector has led to environmental and economical problems and transition to Alternative Fuel Vehicle (AFV) has become a necessity. Electric Vehicle (EV) is one of the AFVs that deliver clear benefit of zero tailpipe emissions. The EVs have a limited range and their use is influenced by the location of recharging facilities. The charging time of EV is long and recharging in stations take a lot of time. In addition, the capacity of recharging stations is limited and if the capacity is occupied the vehicles must wait in queues. In this paper, a recharging station location model with queue is proposed which considers capacity, recharging time, and waiting time. The presented model is a set covering and can easily become a maximum cover model with or without predefined activities. A heuristic algorithm to solve the model is proposed and the model is evaluated using two networks under various conditions; a random generated and a network of Penghu County. The obtained results indicate that the model is able to identify the location and the number of the recharging stations and provide a good travel plan especially for tourism.