UC Davis

The rapid growth of Electric Vehicle (EV) populations, driven by Zero-Emission Vehicle (ZEV) regulations across the United States, poses challenges to the EV charging infrastructures, including ensuring equitable recharging access, addressing affordability imbalances, and enhancing resilience against the ever-increasing power disruptions. Existing studies on those topics reveal critical gaps: lack of an evaluation framework that incorporates affordability and resilience considerations, limited effort on affordability challenges and lack of effective resilience planning. In light of these knowledge gaps, this dissertation seeks to 1) understand the potential equity issues in existing EV charging infrastructure systems considering multiple factors including affordability and resilience, and 2) develop a multi-agent modeling framework for Energy Storage Systems (ESS) integration planning that identifies strategies/policies for enhancing both affordability and resilience. For optimal resilience enhancement, this dissertation envisions a hybrid infrastructure layout that combines individually-owned ESSs by charging stations and independent ESSs collectively utilized by multiple stations, which are coordinated by independent operators. Case studies, built on counties within the region of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, unfold in two parts. Part A evaluated existing infrastructures, revealing an uneven development of charging resources with respect to land use, with over 95% allocated in central and established communities. However, there seem to be minimal income-related inequity concerns associated with accessibility when factoring in demand and examining correlation with income. Notably, rural residential areas exhibit the highest resilience challenges. Part B explored optimal ESS layout, highlighting the significant role of ESS in reducing public EV charging cost, and revealing the considerable resilience value of coordinated ESS systems. For areas with a low demand-to-supply ratio and high risks of power crises, resilience regulations can significantly improve the system's defense against power disruptions. However, these regulations are less effective in areas with high demand-to-supply ratios. Moreover, they can increase costs for end users. By introducing additional incentives, resilience can be enhanced while simultaneously reducing user expenses, leading to a net decrease in societal costs.