Advancing Sustainability through Powered Infrastructure for Roadway Electrification

ASPIRE is founded on a comprehensive research program with convergence and deep integration across disciplines through four thrusts, namely Transportation, Adoption, Power, and Data. We target seamless integration of wireless and wired charging systems across vehicle classes and power levels to achieve a ubiquitous charging experience for electric vehicle owners. This is accomplished through an integrated systems-of-systems approach to co-optimize transportation and electric utility systems and end-user experience and productivity, which requires significant departure from conventional thinking. Our research occurs at the nexus of electrical-mechanical-thermal design of vehicles, charging systems, pavements, and power systems, data fusion and dynamic optimization of networked and co-dependent systems, and econometrics, policy, user acceptance, and environmental and societal impacts. New fundamental insights will be gained in methods and materials to integrate charging infrastructure into long-life pavements. New data science innovations in solving large-scale, nonlinear, nonconvex, and NP-hard problems in offline and real-time settings integrated across the electric grid and transportation systems will have game changing impact on systems design and optimization. New economic, behavioral, and social science models and frameworks will be developed to allow the team to break out of conventional thinking when considering the societal, policy, consumer, and market perspectives of and integration with technology elements. The ASPIRE ERC’s holistic and convergent research approach is unique globally and critical to advancing and sustaining the envisioned equitable transformations across the transportation and electric utility industries.

Transportation Research Thrust
The Transportation thrust supports vehicle network and transportation systems modeling and control and integration of wireless and wired charging into the infrastructure in an affordable, constructible, maintainable, resilient, and sustainable manner.

Adoption Research Thrust
The adoption team studies technical and societal aspects that impact market acceptance and adoption of disruptive and transformative technologies. Subareas of research include user and societal acceptance, public and economic policy, and techno-economic, environmental, and societal impact. The results of this thrust facilitate a data-driven research path toward achieving center goals.

Power Research Thrust
The Power team has the lead role in addressing the fundamental advancements required for extreme fast charging and wireless power transfer enabling technologies and co-lead roles for grid and vehicle operational and planning technologies. The team also has critical support roles in pavement integrated systems, long life, and society-technology integration.

Data Research Thrust
The Data thrust serves as a central convergent resource where diverse data sets and optimization problems can be effectively integrated and analyzed for scientific discovery. The thrust connects data science research with other application domains such as electric vehicles, charging systems, renewable energy, transportation, environment, and user behavior analysis and adoption.