Friday 4 June 2021

How much new capacity is needed to supply motorway charging points?

 


This just in from Ecotricity, my green electricity supplier. I'm delighted to see the progress the are making in their rollout of motorway charging points for EV's.

However - is National Grid letting us know the capacity and distribution implications of this activity?

One service station has a peak capacity requirement of 12x350kW=4.2 megawatts. 

There are 158 such service stations in UK, requiring 663 megawatts of peak capacity, two thirds of a Gigawatt.

And that's only enough to charge 1,896 vehicles at a time.

By 2030, several million electric vehicles will be coming on stream per year, all needing charging most days.

How much extra capacity will they need?