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The government’s Committee on Climate Change (CCC) has estimated we’ll need 300,000 EV charge points by 2030. As of June 2022, we have just over 30,000. That means we need to install an average of 40,000 chargers per year between now and 2030. That’s a tall order. Especially given that in the last two years we’ve only installed 10,000 nationally.

We worked alongside PMs in EB Charging to document their processes and map out stages where teams regularly found themselves blocked. We validated this with further detailed interviews and studies with local authority transport teams and other EV solutions providers.

What’s going wrong?

For once, finance isn’t the main problem. The government On Street Residential Chargepoint Scheme is providing local authorities with grants to fund the deployment of on street chargers in areas of need. Meanwhile, petrol forecourt giants are funnelling millions in EV charging stations - getting ready for the transition.
So what’s going wrong? The issue is identifying where to put them. Where can EV chargers be built? And where is there a sound business case to install? These are tricky questions that take time to answer. Sites take time to survey in person and the connection to the electricity grid can be both expensive and slow to obtain.

What can accelerate deployment?

Simply getting all the data and information in one place is a surprisingly good start. Many local authorities and even some charge point solution providers don’t have access to quality spatial analysis and mapping tools that make it easy to rapidly rule out or in hundreds of sites.
Once you have a suitable tool to perform analysis, then it's a case of getting the data to make the right decisions faster. That means data on site suitability and layout, proximity to points of interest and travel corridors, population density.
In this article, I’ll highlight 3 that stand to rapidly accelerate the currently lagging process.

Public transport accessibility levels (PTALs)

Not everyone needs cars. If you live in central London - aside from the eye watering cost of parking - you are likely well enough served by public transport that a car is a nice to have - rather than a necessity.

Public transport accessibility levels or public transport poverty is a useful dataset for transport planners. A PTALs essentially considers the distance from any point to the nearest public transport stop, and service frequency at those stops. The result is a grade from 1–6 that measures its relative access to public transport networks.

This valuable information can be used to support designing low emission zones, identifying areas of transport poverty, planning transport links and identifying areas where vehicle ownership (and therefore EV charging need) may be high.

To date, these are only available for Greater Manchester and London where they have been used to designate the Ultra Low Emission Zones (ULEZ).

Due to their importance in the Energy Transition. We are expanding coverage of PTALs nationwide to support out planning tools LAEP+ and EV Site.

Predicting chargepoint utilisation

It’s not just about where you can put a charge point. It’s also about where you should put a charge point from a business point of view.

Understanding potential charge point utilisation patterns is critical for maximising both revenue for charge point operators and targeting areas of greatest need as they transition to EVs.

To support this, we combined transport, demographic, vehicle ownership, points of interest data and a charging model to forecast utilisation needs within 100m2 zones across urban areas.

Although historic charge point utilisation data is hard to get hold of, we’ve also been experimenting with using what’s available to predict charging patterns - when will people charge, for how long, and on what days. This can further help installers understand what type of charging stations are a best fit.

Understanding electrical network capacity

Network data is a minefield. “It’s all greek to me,” is a common refrain I heard over again from dozens of local authorities thrown into the energy transition and trying to navigate the complicated world of the UK electricity system.

The data standards between the 6 UK distribution network operators (DNOs) varies. We decided to take on the mammoth task of source, cleaning, standardising and infilling gaps to build a complete digital twin of the UK electricity system from transmission to low voltage distribution levels.

Where we are lucky enough to work directly with DNOs, that data can go all the way to the last mile of the network. We’re still filling in some gaps, but, by and large, users of LAEP+ and EV Site now have access to some top quality network data. That means network topologies, loading and constraint data that can help them understand and triage connection sites by their likely cost and ease of connection.

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Obviously there are many more data layers that charge point installers and transport planners need to consider. And we've only scratched the surface here...

If you’re interested in understanding more about the world of transport data and understanding what data layers Advanced Infrastructure can offer. Feel free to get in touch today.

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