An Interoperable Reservation System for Public Electric Vehicle Charging Stations: A Case Study in Germany

As the number of electric vehicles on the roads increases, new technologies and concepts such as fast/super-fast charging and dynamic pricing are developed and implemented respectively. With those innovations on the rise, reservation of charging stations for electric vehicles will play a pivotal role in seamlessly integrating them into the transportation and mobility system. In this paper we derive basic requirements for building interoperable reservation systems and identify four generic approaches to reservation. For designing the system model and engineering the charging station reservation system, we utilize the E-Mobility Systems Architecture framework. For one of the reservation types, we implement a proof-of-concept and demonstrate its usefulness by conducting a showcase in Bavaria, Germany. Further, we set up and conduct a simulation-based evaluation to compare the four different reservation types regarding their benefit to users and providers as well as overall system efficiency. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first contribution proposing an interoperable reservation system for electric vehicle charging. The results presented in this paper provide insights regarding the feasibility of the different reservation types under varying conditions.