Abstract

The transport sector accounts for a third of Sweden’s total greenhouse gas emissions, where cars and heavy trucks dominate the use of fossil fuels. To reduce national greenhouse gas emissions, the Swedish government is now intensifying the work for an electrified transport sector. One part of an electrified transport sector could be electric roads, a system that enables dynamic charging.An expanded electric road system would enable heavy vehicles to drive long distances on electricity and shorter journeys on battery power, something that is expected to contribute to environmentally friendly and time-efficient freight transport. To implement a large-scale electric road system, capacity in the electricity grid and availability of electric power along the electric roads will be required. This study presents a plan for connecting an electric road to the electricity grid in the electricity network area of Vattenfall Eldistribution. From the results, the idea was to present general recommendations and conclusions from the experiences of the study, that could contribute in further implementation of electric roads.

The road section that has been selected for the study was the E4 between Gävle and Stockholm. Initially, a model for calculating the power demand along the potential electric road has been modeled in Matlab. Furthermore, connection possibilities as in transformer stations have been investigated on the basis of available capacity and a number of requirements that apply to electricity quality. The analysis was based on three scenarios where different degrees of strengthening of the existing electricity network were assumed. In addition, a forecast for 2030 and a cost estimation for each scenario have been carried out. The result of the study indicates that for road sections close to larger cities, there are a larger number of connection options. For longer road sections of rural areas, there are fewer connection options available and this is where it becomes most relevant to strengthen the electricity grid. The designed solutions that meet the requirements will have investment costs of approximately 331 to 362 million Swedish crown. The conclusion is that strengthening of the electricity grid will be required in order to supply the chosen electric road with available capacity while meeting the requirements for electricity quality.