A paper co-authored by Yangfang (Helen) Zhou, an Associate Professor of Operations Management at LKCSB, has won a Best Publication Award given out by INFORMS, a professional association for operations research and management science.
"Smart Charging of Electric Vehicles: An Innovative Business Model for Utility Firms" was published in the journal Manufacturing and Service Operations Management and won the 2023 ENRE (Energy, Natural Resources, and the Environment), Best Publication Award in the category of Environment and Sustainability.
This award is given annually to the best refereed journal article in this area of interest. The award aims to recognize the contributions of ENRE members to the field of environment and sustainability in Operations Research & Management Science.
This same paper was also a finalist in the Operations Management Best Paper Award, which is given out by the Manufacturing and Service Operations Management Society, which is also part of INFORMS.
The paper on smart charging explores betters ways to charge electric vehicles. Given that the procurement cost of electricity and associated emissions varies significantly during the day, substantial savings can be achieved by smart charging, that is, delaying charging until the cost is lower.
Since charging stations do not know which drivers can delay charging, Professor Zhou and her co-authors proposed a method to let drivers choose. Drivers who can delay will receive a discount for charging.
They show that this smart charging is a triple win---A win for the electric grid as it lowers electricity generation cost, a win for drivers as they get a price discount, and a win for the environment as it lowers emissions.
Professor Zhou also co-authored a different, but related, paper that was a runner-up in the 2023 Harvey J Greenberg Research Award, which is given out by the INFORMS Computing Society.
The paper, "An Exponential Cone Programming Approach for Managing Electric Vehicle Charging" was published in Operations Research. The paper proposes a new method for commercial charging stations, such as EVgo or ChargePoints, to schedule electric vehicle charging to minimize the expected total cost.
The Harvey J Greenberg Research Award is an annual award that honours research excellence in the field of computation and operations research applications, especially those in emerging application fields.
Prof Zhou joined LKCSB in 2013 and became an associate professor in 2022. She obtained her PhD in Operations Management from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University in 2012.
She was awarded the Lee Kong Chian Fellowship for the period 2022-23 and was made an Urban Fellow at Singapore Management University for the period 2023-24.
