ABSTRACT: A key element to promote the electrification of the automotive fleet, is the availability of public charging facilities. Their efficient deployment and operation give rise to interesting problems in dynamics and optimization, some of which are discussed in this talk.

In the first part we discuss the efficient management of a single parking lot endowed with EV chargers. Limits in both peak power and 3-phase electrical balance make for a non-trivial scheduling of service within the facility. We apply both online optimization and queueing theory to solve this problem.

In the second part we consider spatially distributed charging facilities. We review optimization problems that pertain to the deployment of such infrastructure. For operation, we consider a dynamic situation in which requests arrive asynchronously and self-route to the more convenient station, based on delay information. With tools of convex optimization we show convergence to an equilibrium, which has interesting connections to the classical literature on optimal transport and selfish routing.

BIOSKETCH: Fernando Paganini received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology (1996) and served on the EE Faculty at UCLA (1997-2005); since 2005 he has been Professor of Engineering at Universidad ORT Uruguay, and is currently Vice Dean of Research. He is a Packard Fellow, a Fellow of IEEE, and a Fellow of IFAC. He is a member of the Uruguayan National Academies of Sciences and of Engineering, and of the Latin American Academy of Sciences. During the pandemic he was appointed by the Uruguayan President as one of three coordinators of the Honorary Scientific Advisory Group on COVID 19. His research interests are control and networks.