Resilient and Low-Footprint Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure

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Canada's plans for recovery from the pandemic must include strong action to tackle climate change, according to Prime Minister Trudeau. However, Canada's climate policies and actions have been rated as "Highly Insufficient". Only 5% of the passenger vehicles registered in 2021 in Canada were Electric Vehicles (EVs). One of the major reasons for this relatively low EV adoption rate is the shortage of publicly available charging infrastructures. Comparing the EV market share and public fast charger availability in some of the world-leading countries/states and Canada indicates that full transition to zero-emission vehicles in Canada requires nationwide deployment of EV chargers. Developing the urgently needed EV charging stations in different regions of Canada requires addressing multiple technical and economic challenges. These include (i) need for additional power generation, transmission, and distribution capacities to meet the extra charging power demand especially in densely populated urban areas, (ii) risk of electric transportation disruption due to utility grid outages, especially during natural disasters, and (iv) cybersecurity concerns. The proposed research program aims to address these challenges by developing an innovative EV charging solution that is based on a low-footprint rotary parking tower structure and a microgrid framework that leads to resilience against natural disasters, blackouts, and faults.