Power and Energy Demand to Support E-Mobility on Highway: The Italian Case Study

In recent years, market trends are confirming the increasing use of electric vehicles for private mobility. The use of such vehicles is inevitably affecting highway contexts as well. Therefore, highway network operators need to plan for the installation of adequate infrastructure to enable and manage the growing demand for fast charging expected in the coming years. This paper aims to assess the impact that this charging demand may have on the service areas (SAs) of the highway network operated by Autostrade per l’Italia. Starting from available traffic data, this paper proposes a methodology to forecast, for each service area, the future charging needs of EVs on a daily, monthly, and yearly basis. The analysis considers both the energy and the power that needs to be made available to ensure charging during daily traffic peaks. The results show that the impact generated by EVs will be generally significant, especially in terms of power demands with peaks between two and three megawatts. The methodology developed is entirely general and therefore applicable for similar planning in other highway or suburban roadway contexts. The validity of the developed methodology and the made assumptions have been preliminary confirmed through an initial set of data collected from one of the charging stations installed in one representative service area.