flexible electric vehicle charging

[cyang]

I have started with the Demo model just to make it easier to figure out how to set this up.  I am trying to figure out if it is possible for the model to "decide" the optimal times for charging electric vehicles.  In the Demo model, there are 12 timeslices (4 seasons and 3 daynite periods).  In the transportation base year template (VT_DEMOT_TRA_V5), car demand is specified in each timeslice (as a fraction of the annual demand in COM_FR table), which happens to mirror the fraction of hours in each timeslice.  Does electricity demand for charging the electric car (CARELC) always need to coincide with the demand for MPK for CAR_LD and CAR_SD?  Or is there a way to disconnect the period in which electric cars are charged with the usage of the car? In the model that I eventually hope to bring this to, we have 6 "seasons" (2 month periods) and 8 "daynite" periods (3 hour periods).  What I was hoping to do is specify the amount of charging that occurs in a given season, but have the model have the flexibility of choosing which daynite periods the charging occurs in in order to minimize cost.  (e.g. we could assume that 1/6 of all EV charging occurs in each season (0.167), but the amount of charging is each day night period is a decision variable). Does anyone know how this might be set up?  Should I even disaggregate car demand in the COM_FR table?  I do not necessarily want to specify the usage of any other vehicle fuels (i.e. gasoline, or diesel) by timeslice, just electricity.  Any help would be greatly appreciated! thank you Chris

[Antti-L]

Sure, it is possible to let the model optimize charging, and with user-defined charging restrictions. See some discussion and examples in this long thread (two pages):
http://forum.kanors-emr.org/showthread.php?tid=8

[cyang]

Thanks Antti.  I tried searching but I didn't see any threads on the subject.  But I just realized that the default is to only search for the last six months so that is why I didn't see it. 

I will try this suggestions in the thread.

thanks,

Chris

[AKanudia]

Wouter had suggested this several months ago, but the default search period was changed to "Any date" yesterday.

[cyang]

thanks.  That's helpful.