Electric vehicle fast charging station usage and power requirements

The anticipated usage and power requirements of future fast charging points is critical information for organisations planning the rollout of electric vehicle charging infrastructure. This paper presents two novel methods to assist in such planning, one method to predict the time of day fast charging points will be used and one method to estimate the fast charging power required to satisfy electric vehicle driver requirements. The methods involve taking data from instrumented gasoline vehicles and assuming that all the journeys are instead conducted using full battery electric vehicles. The methods can be applied to any dataset of gasoline vehicle journeys that have key data, namely journey start and end times and distance travelled. The methods are demonstrated using a dataset from the United States. It is predicted that for long distance journeys, when the electric vehicle range is exceeded, fast charging point usage will peak in the evening, with 45% of daily fast charges occurring between the hours of 3pm and 7pm. It is also estimated that to satisfy 80% of long distance journeys a charging rate of 20 miles/minute is required, equating to a charging power of 400 kW assuming the electric vehicles achieve a driving efficiency of 3 miles/kWh.