Optimal operation of battery exchange stations for electric vehicles

•New operation approach for BES to satisfy customers’ requirements and minimize the operation costs.•Investigate the integration of the operation of multiple batteries while being exchanged in BES, and arrivals of different customers over the day, and the grid power limitation.•The necessity of proposing a new operational approach for the BES is due to the need for a day ahead plan to decide charging, discharging, and replacing the batteries in stock of BES. However, the grid limit and demand charges should be considered in this model. Due to environmental and energy security concerns, low emission vehicles present a vital necessity for clean transportation. In particular, electric vehicles (EVs) are the most promising solution due to the fact that the electrical power system is the most ready infrastructure to supply their requirement. Two possible energy delivery solutions to the EVs, namely the charging stations and the battery exchange stations (BESs) are the focus of research nowadays. In this paper, a new optimal operation approach is proposed for the BESs. The proposed new model determines the optimal charging, discharging, and exchange decisions for the battery stock throughout the day taking into consideration the customers’ arrivals, the variations in the grid price, the grid connection limitations, and the self-degradation of the batteries. The objective of the proposed approach is to maximize the BES owner profit while satisfying the EV owners’ requests. The BES operation optimization problem is formulated as mixed-integer programming (MIP) problem and is solved as a day-ahead scheme. The performance of the BES is compared to conventional EV charging stations, where the BES shows superior customer satisfaction and higher profit.