Placement of Fast-Charging Infrastructure for Long-Haul Road Freight Based on Spatio-Temporal Evaluation of En-Route Energy Needs

The rapid progression of the electrification of road transport in many countries urges the need to make informed decisions on the location and size of the required charging infrastructure. This paper’s main contribution is a novel method to position fast-charging stations based on the transportation energy demand and to evaluate the performance of such charging infrastructure. Depending on their range and the availability of charging infrastructure, electric vehicles may need to adjust their route patterns to include en-route charging. Understanding and planning for these adjustments can help assess future charging infrastructure needs more effectively. The proposed method introduces a detailed agent-based simulation procedure to track individual trucks assumed to be fully electric. The procedure allows for analyzing each vehicle’s and charging station’s specific power flows. A case study based on a one-to-one representation of Swedish long-haul road freight transport is created based on real-world data. The results demonstrate that using the presented method, 90% of the Swedish long-haul truck fleet can be electrified with 26 carefully placed charging stations. These stations vary in size between 10-60 MW, presenting a utilization of 30-53%. The paper also provides detailed time variations in charging needs, using the best available data.