Comments Off on How to prepare our grids for electric trucks
In mid-February, the EU Commission is due to publish a law proposal essential to the energy transition, the next CO2 standards for heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs). The proposal is expected to accelerate the emissions reduction of fossil-fueled trucks and, in parallel, incentivise sales of battery electric trucks.
While it’s widely recognised that electrifying freight kilometres is key to cutting the EU’s transport emissions, some stakeholders raised doubts about whether power grids will be able to manage the charging of electric trucks.
The short answer is yes, but accelerated grid connections and smart charging will be key to integrating these new EVs into our power grids and keeping costs in check.
“Smart” or “managed” charging means charging EV batteries, for instance, those of electric truck fleets at a rest stop or depot, when costs for electricity are lowest, i.e. renewables are available and there’s spare capacity on the grid. That way, smart charging reduces carbon emissions and the need for costly upgrades of the power grid.
Ambitious CO2 targets are key
Setting an ambitious target for zero-emission trucks in the upcoming proposal is crucial to accelerate urgently needed reductions of freight emissions.
Trucks — ranging from urban delivery trucks to long-haul tractor-trailers — represent less than 2% of Europe’s vehicles but cause around 25% of emissions from road transport, and freight volumes are growing.
While current e-truck numbers are still low in Europe, they will grow significantly through 2030, according to announcements by governments and truckmakers.
Recent research shows that by 2035, most electric trucks across short, regional and long-haul segments will likely be competitive to Diesel trucks in cost, but also range, payload and driving times. Energy regulators and grid operators need to anticipate these growing e-truck numbers and proactively plan for trucks’ grid use.
Plan for it now
To optimally integrate electric trucks into power grids, governments need to start planning now. This includes matching the needs of hauliers in terms of charging demand and locations, with the grid’s current and planned hosting capacity, e.g. as outlined in national grid investment plans.
The energy demand for battery-electric trucks in Germany is estimated at 13 TWh in 2030, or the equivalent of about 1% of the country’s total electricity produced. This does not necessarily imply increasing peak demand by the same amount. Some investments in grid reinforcements will be needed, but how much will fundamentally depend on how truck charging is optimised.
The analysis available so far suggests that additional peak demand from electric truck charging can be reduced by 50-80% if charging is optimised, depending on use cases and favourable regulatory conditions, e.g. the availability of time-of-use tariffs.
Long-haul trucks, operating long-distance trips across the EU, will rely more on public charging. Their mandatory resting time of at least nine hours offers plenty of flexibility to exploit readily available grid capacity as well as cheaper energy.
Smart charging, based on time-of-use tariffs, helps truck operators automatically adjust their charging to constantly changing cost of electricity. It is also possible to optimise for shorter charging periods, for example during their minimum 45-minute mandatory break at highway truck rest areas.
A growing range of smart charging servicesis already available for passenger EVs across Europe offering tariffs and software that helps fleet owners to optimise charging to their schedule.
Energy market reforms just opened for consultation, offer an important opportunity to advance the availability of time-of-use pricing of energy and networks, and the build-out of a market for smart charging services.
Key arbiters in preparing the power grids are Europe’s transmission and distribution grid operators who have a tremendous opportunity in e-mobility to optimise grid efficiency.
Make truck charging a priority
EU decision makers can help truck operators transition to electric by quickly finalising two more legislations that will help deploy the charging infrastructure in the next decade.
The Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation, currently in final negotiations, will support Member States in building the necessary public charging framework for trucks along Europe’s highways.
The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (also in negotiations) sets requirements to upgrade new and existing buildings with EV charging infrastructure and shouldn’t miss the opportunity to advance upgrades at logistics depots, too.
The EU won’t be able to reach its climate goals without drastically cutting freight emissions. Direct electrification via battery trucks is now the widely recognised way forward, offering the most energy-efficient option to decarbonise road transport.
But if charging is not planned for proactively, and managed smartly, the additional electricity demand will lead to higher costs for consumers, the power system, and the environment.
It may also eventually slow down the clean energy transition, or pave the way to more inefficient alternatives such as hydrogen.
Accelerating EV sales is not enough — we now need to ensure EV’s efficient integration into our power system, and use the existing infrastructure more efficiently before expanding it, through smart planning and charging.
The original version of this article appeared in Euractiv.
Comments Off on Standards for EV smart charging: A guide for local authorities
The electrification of road transport is happening – and it is already having a profound impact on the energy system and our cities. As more and more people drive electric, smart charging can ease the integration of the newcomers into the grid.
Smart charging enables charging to automatically happen at times when electricity costs are lowest – without compromising the needs of vehicle owners. As a result, smart charging creates a powerful opportunity to use more renewable energy and better utilise existing grids, accelerating the energy transition while reducing costs for all.
Cities are essential actors in making smart charging happen at a large scale. Every time they publish a public procurement procedure and every time they issue permits for EV infrastructure, it is in their hands to make smart charging work better — now and in the years to come.
But how can local authorities deploy a future-proof, robust smart charging network, with technology rapidly evolving?
Important standards supporting smart charging – such as vehicle-to-grid (V2G) – are not yet available for charging stations built today. To avoid becoming obsolete before the end of its expected lifetime, infrastructure must be ready for future upgrades.
Authors Luka De Bruyckere of ECOS and Jaap Burger from RAP offer a guide for local authorities to help ensure that cities can take these standardisation developments into account when procuring charging infrastructure.
Comments Off on Smart cities, you’ve got a friend in electric cars: How to unleash the potential of smart charging through public procurement
The electrification of road transport is happening – and it is already having a profound impact on the energy system and our cities. As more and more people drive electric, smart charging can ease the integration of the newcomers into the grid.
Smart charging enables charging to automatically happen at times when electricity costs are lowest – without compromising the needs of vehicle owners. As a result, smart charging creates a powerful opportunity to use more renewable energy and better utilise existing grids, accelerating the energy transition while reducing costs for all.
Cities are essential actors in making smart charging happen at a large scale. Every time they publish a public procurement procedure and every time they issue permits for EV infrastructure, it is in their hands to make smart charging work better — now and in the years to come.
But how can local authorities deploy a future-proof, robust smart charging network, with technology rapidly evolving?
Important standards supporting smart charging – such as vehicle-to-grid (V2G) – are not yet available for charging stations built today. To avoid becoming obsolete before the end of its expected lifetime, infrastructure must be ready for future upgrades.
In a webinar held on 15 December 2022, Luka De Bruyckere from ECOS and Jaap Burger of RAP presented their new guide explaining how to build future-proof infrastructure, and equip cities to make the right choices when procuring new charging infrastructure.
Guest speaker Hugo Niesing from the city of Amsterdam shared his experience in advancing smart charging in a city that leads the transition to e-mobility.
Moderated by Ivo Cabral, Press & Communications Manager, Environmental Coalition on Standards at ECOS.
E-commerce has grown significantly during the COVID crisis, recording a 15% increase in activity and delivery traffic in urban areas between 2019 and 2021. Replacing diesel delivery trucks with battery-electric trucks can help cut harmful emissions and local pollution and reduce noise levels from last-mile delivery.
Given their low daily driving ranges of 50 km on average and predictable schedules, urban delivery trucks present a promising segment for electrification. The high upfront cost of these vehicles, however, has been one of the main barriers preventing logistics companies from electrifying their fleets. Research by the International Council for Clean Transportation (ICCT) and the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP) shows that these vehicles are in fact already cheaper to use than diesel trucks in four of six major European cities, when factoring in current purchase subsidies.
Electric trucks can reach cost parity with diesel trucks in 2022 in some cities, with purchase subsidies
To scale up the market for battery-electric delivery trucks, well-designed policies combining income-neutral government purchase subsidies, local emissions charges and smart charging requirements will help to put the cost advantage of electric trucks on solid footing. This in turn can accelerate the transition to electric fleets. ICCT and RAP unpack these three solutions based on their first-of-its-kind primary data analysis comparing six European cities: Paris, Berlin, Rome, Amsterdam, Warsaw and London.
Battery trucks need sustainable purchase subsidies to scale up electric delivery
Current purchase premiums help electric trucks compete with their diesel counterparts in major markets, but these subsidies are mainly financed by governments and, therefore, are not fiscally sustainable.
A solution already implemented for passenger cars in some EU countries is the bonus-malus tax scheme, which incentivises operators to buy an electric truck with a purchase premium financed by a tax imposed on newly registered diesel trucks. For electric trucks registered in 2022 in Germany, a bonus of €6,000 ($5,930) would be sufficient to cover the five-year gap in the total cost of ownership parity compared to diesel trucks. This bonus would be funded by an additional tax on diesel vehicles registered that year, with the maximum fee ranging from €700 to €2,500, depending on the sales share.
Purchase premiums and emissions charges help electric delivery vehicles reach cost parity in 2027 in Paris
Zero-emission zones and small emission charges for diesel trucks accelerate cost-parity threshold
Emissions charges on diesel delivery trucks are an efficient complementary policy to make the use of electric trucks more attractive for delivery companies. Our analysis shows that cities implementing an emissions charge between €2 and €4 per day, per vehicle in low- and zero-emissions zones will help electric trucks achieve cost parity before 2025, without any additional purchase premiums. If the charge is increased to €6 per day, electric trucks are the better economic choice today, without any other subsidies. Small emission charges generate disproportionately high benefits for fleet electrification. Across Europe, 250 cities have introduced low- and zero-emission zones to improve their air quality, with Amsterdam and Paris planning zero-emission zones for 2030.
Despite current high power prices, electric trucks are a reliable choice for operators
Getting a complete picture of costs to run an electric truck can be challenging. Fleet operators not only need to estimate the costs of using electric trucks for delivery operations, but also the costs related to energy and grid use when charging them at the depot. In times of crisis, power prices may be considered a high cost factor. However, our analysis shows that, in March 2022, when electricity prices doubled and diesel prices increased by 60% relative to 2021 prices, electric trucks would become economically attractive one to three years earlier than if the 2021 prices applied. This is due to the higher efficiency of electric power trains, which need less energy for the same mileage, thus making battery-electric solutions less sensitive to price fluctuations than diesel-fuelled vehicles.
Cost parity is in sight, even with high electricity prices
An additional cost that is hard to estimate for operators – and is therefore often ignored by other studies – is the cost of using the power grid. This can vary between locations depending on whether truck charging is managed. Electric delivery trucks, depending on the company’s schedule, can be parked for up to 12 hours overnight at the depot. Charging them ‘smartly’ at this time increases the chance the fleets’ electricity demand remains within the depot’s overall installed capacity at all times. By not adding to its peak consumption, expensive upgrades to the depot’s grid connection can often be avoided.
To help operators optimise charging and save cost, time-varying electricity and network tariffs are needed to give operators price signals about when it is most beneficial to charge their trucks. Analysis of primary data from six depot locations across Europe showed these costs can vary by a factor of four, depending on how tariffs are structured and whether they offer opportunities for smart charging.
A policy window to equip urban logistics depots for smart truck charging
Delivery trucks will charge mainly at the depot and truck volumes are expected to grow significantly in the second half of the decade. The current revision of the European Energy Performance of Buildings Directive can accelerate the buildout of charging infrastructure for logistics depots by requiring new and renovated depots and freight centres to install “smart” charging points for commercial vehicles.
Including requirements to set up charging infrastructure at commercial depots with public access in the new Alternative Fuel Infrastructure Regulation is another opportunity to advance charging infrastructure. Finally, the New EU Urban Mobility Frameworkoffers the chance to address charging equipment and depot connections as part of local urban planning.
Electrifying logistics in urban areas is an easy win
Electrifying last-mile delivery is an obvious choice in the context of energy crises and the urgent need to make energy use more efficient. With increasing availability of different models, the business case is becoming more and more promising, in particular if helped by purchase incentives and local emissions charges on diesel trucks. These measures, in addition to equipping logistics depots with charging infrastructure, present a package that will help to drive electrification in a growing segment.
A version of this article originally appeared on Energy Monitor.
Comments Off on Electrifying last-mile delivery: Total cost of ownership analysis (Webinar)
Last-mile delivery vehicles are a prime candidate for electrification due to their predictable schedules and relatively short routes. But how does the total cost of ownership of electric delivery vehicles compare to their diesel counterparts? In some major European cities, cost parity is expected to be achieved this year, while others will see parity by the end of this decade.
This webinar presented new research by the International Council on Clean Transportation and RAP that uses comprehensive modeling to consider the different cost components fleet operators encounter during ownership, such as purchase costs, detailed energy costs, maintenance costs, taxes, and financing costs. The authors also discussed policy measures that could help to overcome the cost of ownership gap between battery-electric and diesel trucks in the near term and stimulate early market uptake of battery-electric last-mile delivery trucks.
Comments Off on Utilities Want to Provide EV Fleet “Advisory Services.” Should Regulators Approve?
As the electrification of vehicle fleets goes mainstream, fleet owners are facing a gauntlet of challenges, starting with engaging their electric service provider. The utility response of providing “advisory services” is both creative and presents new challenges for utility and air regulators.
Advisory services, whether offered by utilities or third parties, are designed to educate and enable fleet managers. The goal is to fill the gap between what fleet managers already know about transportation and what they need to know about electric transportation.
RAP recently facilitated a conversation on this topic, inviting a representative of a school district, a utility company, and several third-party transportation service providers to discuss their perspectives and better understand the challenges.
From my perspective as a former utility commissioner, I was asked to serve as the “respondent” and identify the pertinent regulatory issues.
Reviewing Advisory Services Proposals
At first glance, the expansion by utilities from offering a commodity to offering professional services may seem unprecedented. But actually, advisory services are a more visible form of what utilities used to refer to as “marketing key accounts,” a focus that utilities regularly had that helped them stay in touch with sizable commercial and industrial customer segments, and for which they were allowed to recover reasonable expenses.
The point here for regulators is not that this is different, but instead that this is more overt, and coming at regulators in a more robust and comprehensive manner. Advisory services also have a component of market development, a similar quality found in demand-side management programs. Note that third-party support to help utilities better serve fleets is not so different than the energy auditing support that contractors provide energy efficiency programs.
So what have we learned from those experiences, and how do we apply what we’ve learned in this context? This history can help regulators understand how to proceed when a utility says it wants to engage in these ways, that it will incur costs for which it wants recovery, and possibly even that it seeks earnings on those costs.
What is the right regulatory construct to apply here and what needs to change? The slide below provided by Xcel’s Jason Peuquet, does a good job of illustrating the range of comfort to discomfort of the regulatory process in this context. On the right-hand side, regulators are comfortable with rate design. We’ve had a 100-year history with that. Advisory services the new phenomenon over on the left about which we are less certain. The pieces in the middle come with a different levels of comfort.
Source: Xcel
Costs and Benefits
Electrification means that a utility is creating new load. But the regulator still has a key role to determine the answers to two questions: Is the utility proposal creating the kind of load that is appropriate? And is the load being managed effectively from a system benefit perspective? The regulator needs to ask:
What is the utility aspiring to do or become?
How does this new service change the utility’s current role as a public service?
Does investment in advisory services align with existing regulatory principles — i.e., are these investments just and reasonable? And are they least cost?
How should costs be allocated — i.e., who pays for them, and why?
Do today’s costs deliver future societal benefits, however difficult they may be to quantify?
A narrow interpretation would focus on who is the cost causer and what they should pay. That would put all the burden back on the fleet services. That is fine, and internally consistent in a narrow framework.
But recognizing that we are working in a broader arena, we acknowledge that we are not just making investment to help fleets. We are doing “demand creation.” This puts the regulator in a position to look at today’s costs that are known and knowable, and at future benefits that are speculative and uncertain — although we know they are out there. How do we get comfortable matching today’s costs with future benefits? Those benefits range from consumer savings, to lower-cost grid management, to the many societal benefits like reduced air emissions and improved health outcomes.
21st Century Load Forecasting
At the same time regulators need to recognize that doing this work — letting utilities build load through advisory services — ushers in a new aspect of load forecasting. Fundamentally, the regulator-utility relationship will need to further evolve. Effective regulatory oversight of load forecasting requires greater engagement of the utility, with lines of inquiry such as:
Will advisory services requests be strategic and narrow, seeking only to develop certain types of load?
What kind(s) of load do you want?
Do you just want maximum growth, no matter where it comes from?
Where on your system do you want it?
At what time of day do you want it?
Requests for approval of advisory services will bring with them a new complexity about understanding load. So, this is not only an inquiry into costs and benefits (both short- and long-term); it is also a challenge into understanding how the utility is changing its relationship with certain customers — from the traditional provision of a commodity, a blended commodity and service-based relationship. The regulator is confronted with understanding that this service-based customer engagement is interwoven into utility decisions concerning capital asset investments in infrastructure. For it is through effective advisory services that these capital assets become viable and reasonable assets.
Finally, in this world where the utility has the onus to make and justify these proposals, it is the regulator’s role to ensure that the utility is clear in what it aspires to become. And this will require even more questions for regulators to raise:
How does this service fit in the utility’s portfolio?
What is the utility’s longer-term sense of itself as a commodity and service provider?
Is the regulatory called to assist them and nudge them on their way? Or on the contrary, is your task to “keep them in their lane?”
How am I going to manage the commission’s relationship with that utility into the future?
One way or another, transportation electrification represents a new set of evolutionary forces upon the utility-regulator relationship. Awareness and preparation will make the ride more enjoyable.
Comments Off on Electrifying last-mile delivery: A total cost of ownership comparison of battery-electric and diesel trucks in Europe
Europe’s increases in online shopping and delivery over the last two years show no signs of waning. Parcel delivery vehicles make up one of the most significant heavy-duty vehicle segments by volume in Europe, recording a market share of 11% in 2020. Fortunately, their predictable schedules and relatively short routes make last-mile delivery vehicles a prime candidate for electrification. In fact, electric delivery trucks will soon be cheaper to use than diesel trucks.
The International Council on Clean Transportation and RAP break down the various vehicle costs for electric trucks, the energy and network expenses for charging them, and the availability of purchase premiums in six major European cities. In some scenarios, electric trucks reach cost parity with diesel vehicles yet this year. Without the support of these premiums, parity is delayed until 2025 or even 2030 in some cities.
Based on this comprehensive analysis, the authors conclude that battery-electric trucks are economically viable today, given the currently availability of purchase premiums. Other important aspects to consider when electrifying last-mile delivery fleets include choosing the appropriate battery size and reducing operational costs through smart charging of the vehicles.
Policymakers have the ability to advance electrification of electric delivery trucks by:
Implementing a national bonus-malus tax scheme to finance purchase incentives for zero-emission trucks.
Imposing emissions charges on all diesel vehicles entering low- and zero-emission zones in city centres.
Deploying ‘smart’ charging infrastructure in urban logistics depots.
Requiring Member States to implement time-varying electricity and network tariffs to ensure affordability for logistics operators electrifying their fleets.
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