Fuel cost has always been the highest contributor to operating cost for airlines. In the context of Urban Air Mobility (UAM), for a company providing aerial ridesharing services, the cost of electric energy it consumes from the power grid will be the dominating cost factor. Unlike fuel, the electricity market is highly dynamic in terms of pricing and incentives. It often provides considerable amount of monetary compensation for consumers to help balance generation and load in the power system. In this work, we develop an optimal fleet dispatch framework for electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft to transport passengers and provide power grid services either separately or together. In addition to vehicle dispatching, the framework can also optimally price passenger trips taking place at different routes at different times. The eVTOL vehicle fleet operations was subjected to two sources of uncertainties, which are the pricing/incentive stochasticity from the dynamic electricity market, and the passenger demand uncertainty due to the stochastic trip requests. We investigate the trade-off among multiple revenue and cost sources for eVTOL fleet operations. The major objectives of this work include: (1) maximizing the first revenue source generated from transporting passengers; (2) maximizing the second revenue source generated from providing frequency regulation services to the power grid; and (3) reducing the operating and charging costs. The major benefits of this work include: (1) maximizing the revenue from eVTOL fleet operation, which will result in a more profitable aerial ride sharing company; (2) lowering the riding cost for passengers, which will make the aerial ride sharing more affordable to customers; and (3) enhancing the reliability and stability of modern smart grid. The results demonstrate that UAM carriers can earn more profit by dispatching the eVTOL fleet to provide both UAM travel and power grid services simultaneously than providing only one of the services.
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