An Urban Charging Infrastructure for Electric Road Freight Operations: A Case Study for Cambridge UK

Abstract

An urban charging infrastructure for electric road freight operations is explored in this paper. The city of Cambridge, U.K. was chosen for demonstration but the same methodology could be used for other cities. The five Park and Ride bus routes, the refuse collection operations, and two home delivery operations are investigated. Data about existing operations were collected to define accurate drive cycles. Different vehicles are modeled for each operation and their performance is evaluated over the defined drive cycles. Different charging infrastructures are proposed for each operation to ensure that electric freight vehicles can be used for similar duty cycles as conventional vehicles. The additional power demand, additional load, capital cost needed, and the CO2 emissions savings for each case are calculated. The results are scaled up for the entire city and combined with estimated performance requirements for electrified urban deliveries. A complete urban charging network for road freight transportation at Cambridge would increase the power demand of the city by 21.6 MW (20.4% of the current peak) and the energy consumption by 50.6 GWh per year (6.3% of current consumption). The total capital cost is calculated at £149 million which is similar to the cost of other city's projects.