Freight Electric Vehicles in Urban Europe (FREVUE)
The overview of the project is to:
- Collect data to facilitate the assessment of the impact of freight EV use on distribution networks.
- Analyse the data to inform understanding of the opportunities and impact of freight EV charging.
- Establish working groups to communicate lessons learnt in different areas.
Project-on-a-Page summary
Project data
Start date: 01/03/2013End date: 29/09/2017
Budget: £74,310
- Quantify the impact of the additional demand from the freight EV charging uptake.
- Provide insights into how reinforcement can be deferred.
- Understand interactions between EVs and local sub-stations and develop active management techniques for EVs to offer load balancing services to the grid.
- The project will produce a joint detailed White Paper on the role of network operators in the EV rollout in logistics across Europe.
- As part of the FREVUE project, to encourage new networks and the exchange of know-how between project partners, a working group on grid issues and the impact on the EV logistics supply chain has been established.
The project will monitor the charge points at the freight EV operator’s depot where there is currently limited capacity which means any additional charge points on the site will require a new connection to upgrade the supply, at cost to the fleet operator. 3-phase monitoring equipment will be installed against individual EV charging posts to capture data at 10 min intervals on energy consumption (for various charge cycles) which will be matched with data obtained from existing monitoring equipment at the substation. The data will be analysed to identify the impact on the network including the diversified peak demand, the profile of the demand, the opportunities for shifting the load, the characteristics of the EV drive cycle that dictate the demand, the profile on the network meeting the demand and any associated risks to the network.
The conclusions from this trial provides the foundation to inform on the following Innovation strategy capability themes:
- Understand current and future performance of the 11kV and LV networks.
- Develop commercial solutions and products.
- Managing residential and SME consumer demand.
The main learning that will be shared with other DNOs is expected to include:
- An improved understanding of the demands of freight EV charging.
- Insight into how a DNO can manage large LV intermittent loads such as freight EV charging loads.
- Insight into the opportunities available for the smart control of freight EV charging.
- Informing connection policy for commercial freight EV operators.
- Insight from how DNOs in the other demonstrator cities manage the demand from Freight EVs.