Kent County Council EV Infrastructure
Case Study
The Challenge
Kent County Council (Kent CC) wanted to assess the impact of the future mass-market deployment of plug-in vehicles – PiVs, encompassing battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plugin hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) – envisaged by the UK Government’s Road to Zero strategy on future requirements for public electric vehicle recharging infrastructure.
The Development
- Identify future locations for recharging facilities in the county; the 84 locations identified were subjected to a scoring process, based on previous work with local government, to evaluate suitable sites.
- Examine two scenarios for PiV taxi deployment to identify implications for future recharging infrastructure requirements, looking at uptake rates of ~13% and ~75%
- Analysis of the potential for replacement of vehicles in 110-strong Kent County Council Highways fleet to identify BEV replacements.
The Results
44 potential public chargepoint locations were deemed most attractive for installation. Deployment of chargers in a number of these high-scoring locations would begin to provide a comprehensive recharging network coverage of Kent.
Under the medium uptake scenario, only six additional 7kW-22kW (fast) chargepoints and four additional 50kW chargepoints would be required in 2028, and it is assumed that in some districts the taxis would rely on home charging or the public recharging network. Under the enhanced licensing scenario however, the deployment requirements rise to 103 7-22kW and 91 50kW chargepoints dedicated to taxis by 2028.
Many of the cars and small vans in the council’s highways fleet could potentially be replaced with battery electric vehicles with cost and emission savings over a five-year ownership period.