We have final developments from the innovation project eCharge4Drivers: we received feedback during the final project meeting in Barcelona and it looks like our electric vehicle charging location planning tool has been useful and generated positive outcomes through its testing sites in Barcelona (with partner B:SM), Luxembourg and rural northern Italy -part of Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) corridor-.
The EV Charging Location Planning Tool includes socio-demographic data, mobility flows, and charging session data from existing charging stations to predict future needs for charging points, both slow and fast, according to scenarios that include the anticipated adoption of electric vehicles. The tool was presented to target group users, mainly public authorities interested in the effective and efficient placement of charging points. Their feedback has been positive, especially as they seek to determine which sites to prioritise first and where to deploy additional chargers.
On another hand, users have seen different benefits from the tool’s demos.
- It facilitates informed decision-making by allowing users to make data-backed decisions when planning charging infrastructure, which is a clear improvement over the traditional, intuition-based methods.
- The tool also ensures efficiency in resource allocation by focusing on the most promising locations for new charging points and estimating usage rates and profitability.
- It also enhances EV driver satisfaction by increasing the availability of charging points in the most needed areas.
- Finally, the tool supports long-term planning by simulating scenarios for three to five years, providing confidence for future developments.
Nevertheless, conclusions during the final project meeting highlighted recommendations for policymakers and investors to guide future charging efforts and investments. Project partner experiences and a European survey of public authorities and operators pointed out:
- the need for tailored design guidance,
- improved grid connections,
- streamlined planning processes
- the importance of interoperability,
- user-friendly interfaces,
- and political support to maximise the impact and accessibility of innovative EV solutions.
Moving forward, following the end of the project we expect to reuse and possibly scale the product concept. Our scalability and exploitation efforts for this tool will focus on:
- Business and Market analysis to assess fit to other locations and organisations in Europe in the EV ecosystem.
- Contact and implementation plans to reuse the Location Planning Tool concept at R+D level in the identified locations and organisations, in collaboration with partners of the model development (VUB and UNIMORE).
- Result gathering to assess validation of the European rollout plan in the pre-identified locations and organisations and planning any future scaling to other locations outside the EU.
- Assessment of different use cases where the product could be scaled in markets outside the EV environment where the applicability is strong (for instance, hydrogen vehicles).
The simulation platform
During the project, we first performed an analysis of EV drivers’ needs related to vehicle charging which resulted in the solution we designed and integrated: the Location Planning Tool.
This tool has been used and validated in three types of areas while running the project:
- A small village in a rural environment without EVs (Val Trompia, in northern Italy).
- A city, Barcelona. A company has validated the tool: B:SM (Barcelona, Municipal Services company).
- One country, Luxembourg.
This three-fold validation of the tool has proven valuable to illustrate the potential and capabilities of our approach of combining Big data analytics using real-time usage to enable public administrations and private companies to plan future charging infrastructure deployment in the right locations.
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