Specialists are sounding the alarm: why are charging stations needed?

EY estimates that Europe will need 65 million chargers to power 130 million electric vehicles by 2035.

Europe will have 130 million electric vehicles on the road by 2035, according to a joint report by Ernst & Young and the Eurelectric trade association in the electricity industry.

The report’s projections show that Europe’s electric vehicle fleet will grow from its current base of less than 5 million to 65 million by 2030 and then double in the next five years.

Europe’s rapid adoption of electric vehicles has two major tasks for utility providers.

The first is to build a network of 9 million out-of-house chargers along roads, workplaces and fleet charging centers.

There are approximately 445,000 public connectors installed across Europe, according to the latest BloombergNEF report.

“It took us 10 years to install 400,000 chargers,” said Serge Colle, EY’s global leader in energy and resources. “We will now have to make about 500,000 each year by 2030 and about 1 million each year between 2030 and 2035.”

EY estimates that the construction will cost $ 62 billion, with another $ 72 billion needed to install 56 million residential loaders.

“It’s much cheaper to build a little too much today and have that much needed buffer than to wait and find out too late that we’re missing out,” said Kristian Ruby, Eurelectric’s secretary general.

A decade of preparation

The amplification of electric cars will coincide with an increase in the generation of renewable energy, with the electrification of heating and with an increase in extreme weather conditions.

“It’s very important that we don’t sit back and wait,” Ruby said. “This is a decade of work.”

In addition to overseeing the installation of millions of chargers, the utility industry in Europe will have to handle an increased network load.

Along highway corridors, where drivers will expect fast charging on demand, electric vehicles could increase peak loads by 90%, according to EY calculations.

Managing these increases, says Colle, will require solar systems and on-site energy storage at charging stations.

In urban residential areas, EY expects the demand for tax to increase in the evening, when drivers return from work, causing potential increases in peak load of 86%.

To mitigate these peaks, electricity providers will need to provide incentives for drivers to charge during peak hours and reconnect energy from car batteries, which means that both homes and cars will need charging capabilities. bidirectional.

With such mitigations in place, according to the report, utilities could reduce the demand for electric vehicles by more than a fifth.