Representative, empirical, real-world charging station usage characteristics and data in Germany

Christopher Hecht (born Olk), Saurav Das, Christian Bussar, Dirk Uwe Sauer, eTransportation, Vol. 6, November 2020. doi: 10.1016/j.etran.2020.100079

Abstract

Electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure is a new type of consumer in the power grid. Oftentimes, theoretical models have to be used to understand the impact of these new assets since little empirical data of charging station usage is available. This paper aims to increase understanding of charging station usage by providing empirical data collected from 26,951 charging station connectors in Germany. We demonstrate that currently the usage intensity of stations is overall between 15% and 20% and therefore relatively low, but depends strongly on weekday and hour of the day. Fast-chargers are generally occupied less time compared to slower chargers while each charging event also takes significantly less time. A key challenge in optimizing real-world asset usage are EVs which are parked significantly longer at charging stations than the actual charging process takes. We show that an unexpectedly high share of charging events requires between 8 and 10 h indicating that people park their EVs before going to work and then picking them up after they finished working.