Electric Vehicle (EV) Charging Infrastructure

Continuing our preview of the UK’s largest transport conference, the Transport Practitioners Meeting in Nottingham, Jon Williams will be presenting his research into the sufficiency of the public charging infrastructure for electric vehicles. Jon is a graduate transport planner in the Reading office, and one of a number of SYSTRA’s young professionals showcasing their talent at this year’s conference.

Richard Stacey, Head of SYSTRA’s Reading office said “I am very pleased that Jonny’s Paper was selected for this important international conference; this is an excellent opportunity for Jonny to gain experience in presenting his work to a large and expedient audience. The research contains a number of interesting conclusions and ones that will hopefully enable the more efficient and sustainable implementation of the infrastructure to support growing demand for electric vehicles”.

Jon will be presenting his paper in the opening session of the conference on Wednesday 28th June, and will be exploring the ways in which local authorities, planners and developers can help promote the use of electric vehicles to improve the environment, particularly in our towns and cities.

Jon’s research focused on the sufficiency of the Electric Vehicle (EV) charging network on a regional scale by quantifying and visually representing the likely charging patterns of EV drivers within the East Midlands through the use of various network analysis algorithms. In addition to using traffic hotspot and Census data to model the existing supply and demand relationships within the region, his research also forecast the distribution of EV users on to the existing road network for 2020 using a number a number of specific market factors.

Jon’s paper will outline his conclusions, including that although well-planned corridors such as the M1 are currently accommodating the growth of the EV market through the provision of ‘rapid’ charging connectors at numerous service stations, the use of an EV is still heavily constrained by the number of charging facilities between the origin and destination locations. By conducting a localised analysis of the individual charging points within the East Midlands, this research highlighted the importance of land use and the surrounding services at charging point locations, an area of work that has been further explored by SYSTRA through the use of the OPOSRI Tool.