Hourly electricity demand from an electric road system – A Swedish case study

Abstract

This study investigates the hourly electricity demand related to implementing an electric road system (ERS) on five Swedish roads with the highest traffic flows that connect the three largest cities in Sweden. The study also compares the energy demands and the CO2 mitigation potentials of the ERS with the use of carbon-based fuels to obtain the same transportation work, and extrapolates the results to all Swedish European- and National- (E- and N) roads. The hourly electricity demand along the roads are derived by linking 12 available measurement points for hourly road traffic volumes with 12,553 measurement points for the average daily traffic flows along the roads. The results show that applying an ERS to the five Swedish roads with the highest traffic flows can reduce by ∼20% the levels of CO2 emissions from the road transport sector, while increasing by less than 4% the hourly electricity demand on the peak dimensioning hour. Extending the ERS to all E- and N-roads would electrify almost half of the vehicle kilometers driven annually in Sweden, while increasing the load of the hourly peak electricity demand by only ∼10% on average.