engleski

On the Profitability of the Smart Parking Lots

The ever-increasing number of electric vehicles (EV) on the road promotes the idea of sustainable transportation by reducing CO2 emissions. This inherently means there is a growing need for charging stations as well. A potential solution to address the need for charging stations is to transform traditional parking lots into smart parking lots, in a sense that smart parking lots provide not only parking services, but also the possibility for EV owners to charge and discharge their cars for a price. Due to the inherently complex and dynamic environment, a potential obstacle, from a business perspective, to the process of transforming parking lots into smart parking lots is the complexity of estimating the profit of the smart parking lot's owner and, consequently, the length of time required to recover the cost of the initial investment. We propose a simulation-based approach to estimate the smart parking lot owner’s profit during a certain period of time. Coupled with the real- life data from existing parking lots and charging stations, our simulation-based approach shows that the average monthly profit due to electricity brokerage activities is $2, 208.92 and, consequently, the payback period for transforming traditional parking lots to smart parking lots with chargers is about 10 months. The strength of our simulation model lies in the possibility for analysing a variety of different investment strategies. Using a set of the most relevant "what-if" scenarios, we discuss the potential impact of smart parking lots to energy business.

smart parking lot ; electric vehicle ; energy informatics ; simulation-based approach

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