Placement of Electric Vehicle Charging Stations in Congestion Games

This paper extends Rosenthal’s discrete congestion game model in which selfish, rational players minimize travel time. We extend the model by including electric vehicle charging stations. We study the influence of charging station placements on the efficiency of a Nash equilibrium. To that end, we built a simulation tool that can find the social optimum, the worst case, and a Nash equilibrium given an instance of the model. We show that Braess’s paradox can occur when placing electric vehicle chargers, where extra charging facilities can paradoxically lead to higher costs. We show Braess’s paradox in two ways: analytically in an example, and in our simulations. Furthermore, we show that good placement of charging stations can positively affect costs.