An Economic Penalty Scheme for Optimal Parking Lot Utilization with EV Charging Requirements

In the parking lots of public commercial areas, such as shopping malls, hospitals, and scenic spots, the parking spaces with electric vehicle (EV) charging facilities are often occupied by ordinary cars. How to regulate the parking order in the parking lot is a key issue in the operation and management of the parking facilities. In this paper, a method of assessing parking fees for vehicles parked at the charging facilities is proposed based on an economic penalty strategy, including fixed-penalty and dynamic-penalty strategies. First, a traffic flow model of the parking lot in public area is established. Then, a price and consumption model of parking fees and parking lot utilization is established, along with different penalty strategies. Finally, taking the parking lot of a shopping mall as an example, the penalty strategies are optimized through particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. The simulation results show that the method proposed can help to improve the utilization of EV charging facilities in parking lots and guide the orderly parking and charging of EVs at the same time.