BCAM Scientific Seminar: Understanding the energy consumption of EV charging stations

Abstract:
Can we understand the energy consumption of electric vehicle (EV) charging stations from socioeconomic data in their neighbourhood? To address this question, we couple a dataset of electric vehicle (EV) charging stations with publically available data on population, land use, energy consumption, amenities, infrastructure and traffic in the Netherlands, using more than 200 predictors. An OLS fit of energy consumption as a function of the socio-economic predictors would give a coefficient for each of those predictors, thus raising the issue of how to interpret such a large number of coefficients. To solve this problem, we apply $l_1$ regularisation algorithms to select a smaller subset of predictors and interpret the regression coefficients obtained at the optimal value. We illustrate how familiar coefficients, such as wealth, enter the regression together with less expected predictors.

About the speakers:
Rui Carvalho is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Engineering, Durham University. His research focuses on the integration of methods of optimization and statistics, with applications in energy. Before moving to Durham, he was a Senior Research Associate at the Statistical Laboratory, University of Cambridge from March 2014 to February 2015, and a Research Assistant and then Research Fellow at the School of Mathematical Sciences, Queen Mary, University of London between 2008 and 2014. Between 2001 and 2007 he was a Research Fellow, then Senior Research Fellow at the Bartlett School for Graduate Studies and the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London. He obtained a PhD in Theoretical Physics from Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal in 2001. Rui Carvalho´s research has been reviewed in Nature News, MIT Technology Review and Phys.org. 

Lubos Buzna is Senior Researcher in the ERA Chair Team at the University Science Park of the University of Zilina and he is an affiliate of the Faculty of Management Science and Informatics at the University of Zilina as Associate Professor of Applied Informatics. He attained his PhD degree in 2003 from the University of Zilina in the doctoral study program "Transportation and Communication Technology". He worked as researcher for several academic institutions: University of Barcelona (2014-2015) ETH Zurich (2007-2009) and TU Dresden (2005-2007), where he participated in FP6 project IRRIIS and FP7 project LASAGNE. Recently, his research is focused on the development of optimization algorithms and simulation models that are applicable in transportation networks, and more generally, in complex systems.

Click to see the poster