China's charging facility construction market

In recent years, along with the development of electric vehicles, the construction of charging infrastructure in various regions has been strong. In October 2015, the General Office of the State Council issued the “Guiding Opinions on Accelerating the Construction of Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure” and the “Development Guide”. Since the beginning of this year, many places have issued planning rules.

To the reporter's deadline, more than a dozen provinces including Beijing, Shanghai, Hebei, Fujian, Hainan and Qinghai have announced plans or opinions on the construction of electric vehicle charging facilities in the next five years. Nearly 2 million electric vehicle promotion plans indicate a huge market for charging facilities. The reporter combed the blueprint for the development of charging facilities around the country and conducted field research in Yizhuang, Beijing to explore the problems and development direction of charging facilities.

Interpretation of China's charging facilities construction market to explore the future development direction

The proportion of vehicles in Beijing and Shanghai is lower than the national target

From the perspective of construction goals, most regions have set specific charging infrastructure construction based on the development status of electric vehicles and future needs.

The reporter saw that by 2020, Beijing expects that the number of electric vehicles will reach 600,000, the total number of charging facilities will reach 466,000, and the ratio of electric vehicles to charging facilities is 1:0.76. In Shanghai, in 2020, this ratio will be 1:0.8.

The development of electric vehicles in Beijing and Shanghai is relatively fast, and the related supporting facilities and policies started earlier, which also has certain universal significance. Judging from the development plans announced by various places, the proportion of electric vehicle supporting charging facilities announced by Beijing and Shanghai is quite compromised.

The reporter saw that Qinghai will build a charging infrastructure with a 1:1 ratio, which is currently the highest in the country. The construction ratio in Fujian is 1:0.9. Hebei is expected to promote more than 200,000 electric vehicles in 2020, but at that time, 1,970 charging stations will be built, and 65,600 charging piles will be built. The ratio of electric vehicles to charging facilities is only 1:0.33, which is significantly lower than other regions.

At present, the charging facilities for electric vehicles in China are generally low. In Beijing and Shanghai, as of the end of 2015, an average of two electric vehicles had a charging pile.

According to the "Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Development Guide (2015~2020)", by 2020, the number of electric vehicles in the country will exceed 5 million, and the number of charging piles will reach 4.8 million. Among them, official and private passenger cars will build charging facilities in a ratio of 1:1.

It can be seen that in the future, China's charging facilities will be built in proportion to a ratio close to 1:1. However, it is specific to the localities. Because the difficulty of implementing the land is different, the construction targets are not uniform. The proportion of charging facilities in mega-cities such as Beijing and Shanghai is significantly lower than the national average. The provinces such as Qinghai and Fujian are expected to raise the ratio of national charging facilities by virtue of their late-comer advantage.

At the clean energy summit held recently, Yongdong Liu, secretary general of the Standardization Technical Committee for Electric Vehicle Charging Facilities, pointed out that in the future, charging facilities need to achieve large-scale development, in order to solve the worries of ordinary people to buy electric vehicles, and avoid the need for power. “Charging facilities should be rationally laid out and seamlessly connected. However, there are still problems such as difficulty in construction, imperfect supporting systems, and incomplete market mechanisms.”

The Beijing-Shanghai special plan pointed out that the tight parking resources are an important bottleneck restricting the construction of charging facilities in the two places. Beijing's land use, electricity and other conditions are difficult to coordinate, and some consumers do not have the basic conditions for installing self-use charging piles. The night parking gap in Shanghai is as high as 52%, the old residential area is particularly prominent, and the public parking lot resources are also in short supply.

In the current situation, due to the difficulty in the construction of private self-use charging facilities and the low openness of dedicated charging facilities, public charging piles built in public areas such as commercial facilities and parking lots have become the key to ensuring the running of electric vehicles.

DC charging piles are more popular in public charging facilities

According to the development guide issued by the country, the development of electric vehicles will be accelerated in 12 regions including Beijing and Shanghai. It is estimated that by 2020, the scale of promoting electric vehicles will reach 2.66 million.

By 2020, Beijing will become the most densely populated area for electric vehicles and charging facilities in the country.

The city's special plan shows that the social public domain will form a charging network with an average service radius of less than 5 kilometers. The charging service radius of key areas such as the core area of the city, Tongzhou New City, Yizhuang and Yanqing Winter Olympics is less than 0.9 kilometers.

As the Yizhuang area with the same construction standards as the core area of the city, because it is located in the suburbs of Beijing, the parking space resources are relatively sufficient. In recent years, the construction of charging facilities has advanced rapidly.

Has certain representativeness. Recently, the reporter investigated the opening and operation of public charging piles in the Yizhuang area of Beijing.

There are currently more than ten public charging facilities in the core area of Yizhuang, and most of them have already been put into operation. In the statistics of the reporters, there are 74 DC charging piles and 102 AC charging piles. Most parking lots are constructed with DC charging piles and AC charging piles in a ratio of 1:2. According to the development plan, by 2020, more than 1,000 charging piles will be built in Yizhuang.

The reporter saw that the charging facilities in the area have a certain usage rate, and the utilization rate of DC charging piles is much higher than that of AC charging piles. This shows that DC piles with higher charging efficiency are more favored by the market.

At present, in the national and local construction planning, the construction ratio of DC and AC charging piles is not clear. Since the construction cost of DC piles is much higher than that of AC piles, the exchange piles accounted for a high proportion in the public charging facilities built before. Statistics show that as of the end of January 2016, 38,000 AC charging piles and 12,000 DC charging piles have been built in the field of public charging facilities.

However, from the market reaction point of view, AC charging piles have been criticized for their low charging efficiency. In the new public charging facilities in Yizhuang area, the number of DC charging piles is more than the exchange, which may also reflect the future development direction.

In a parking lot with a charging facility, the owner, Mr. Xiong, is charging the car with a DC charging pile. He told reporters that his car's battery life is 150 kilometers, and he runs an average of 200 kilometers per day. It takes only 1 hour to charge with DC, and 5 to 6 hours with AC charging, so AC charging is generally not required.

"Because there is no charging pile of its own, the charging cost in the parking lot is more expensive. The daily charging cost is about 50 Yuan, which is more expensive than burning oil. The private charging pile can enjoy the electricity price of 0.5 Yuan / kWh, which is equivalent to charging outside. 1/4. But now there are very few charging piles in the community, and there must be a fixed parking space. This is a big problem." Mr. Xiong told reporters.

In the planning of public charging facilities in various places, the charging service radius of 0.9 kilometers is the requirement of the density of public charging piles in the core area in many cities, and the ratio of charging piles to electric vehicles is higher than 1:7. The proportion of parking facilities and public parking lots built in large public buildings such as shopping malls and supermarkets will not be less than 10%.

Interconnection between charging operators should be achieved

Many practices have shown that there are still some common problems in the construction and operation of charging facilities.

The Beijing special plan emphasizes that the operation mode of the charging facility is still in the initial stage of exploration. The profit model of charging service fee is single, and a relatively mature business model has not yet been formed.

In addition to the parking gap problem in Shanghai, the problem that charging facilities are occupied by non-new energy vehicles and the payment platform is not uniform to consumers is also mentioned. In Fujian, there is a problem that the residential electricity load is insufficient and some owners oppose the construction of charging piles, and it is not uncommon for non-new energy vehicles to occupy charging parking spaces. At the same time, some public charging facilities are only open to specific groups of people, limiting the enthusiasm of more users to use public charging piles.

In the Yizhuang area survey, the reporter found that the above problems are more or less present.

Among the several charging facilities visited by the reporters, there are basically cases where the charging parking space is occupied by fuel-consuming vehicles or sundries. In a charging space inside a technology park, several fuel-consuming vehicles are parked. Do not occupy, otherwise deflated, the words are completely ignored. In a relatively standard parking lot, there is a specific area for the charging parking space, and there is an obvious fuel consumption parking indication sign at the entrance, but some fuel consumption vehicles are still parked in the charging parking space.

The charging facilities in the area are open to the public. The charging facilities are mainly distributed in the parking spaces inside the Science Park, large commercial facilities parking lots and social parking lots. Most of them are open to social vehicles. At the entrance to most commercial parking lots, there are obvious charging parking spaces indicating the facilities and charging standards.

From the perspective of operating units, Yizhuang also presents a trend of diversification of investment operations. In addition to the charging piles built by the State Grid, BAIC New Energy, large-scale, smooth technology, special calls and other enterprises have also invested in a large number of charging facilities. In addition to providing more choices, the diversification of investment entities has also brought some inconvenience. Many charging facilities use the APP to activate payment. Almost every charging facility will prompt the owner to download the corresponding APP to complete the payment, and the interconnection is poor.

In response to this problem, Liu Yongdong said: "Multiple parties should cooperate to achieve charging transaction settlement and interconnection. For example, operators are required to retain at least one universal payment method to achieve cross-operator charging settlement." In addition, from the perspective of charging standards although there is a region in the same place, the investment subjects are different and the charging standards are different.

According to Beijing's charging standards, electric vehicle charging charges are divided into basic electricity charges and charging service fees.

In 2015, State Grid lowered the charge for electric vehicles in Beijing, from 1.67 Yuan / kWh to 1.2 Yuan / kWh. The reporter saw that some charging facilities in Yizhuang area were implementing the charging standard of 1.2 Yuan, and some were implementing the standard of 1.67 Yuan. The charging facilities built by some private enterprises will charge the electricity and charging service fees in full, up to 2 Yuan / kWh.

Many plans have been put forward, and the demonstration experience will be strengthened, and some common problems should be resolved in time. Beijing proposes to encourage qualified units and personal charging facilities to be open to the public. Complete the national standard compliance upgrade of existing charging facilities and ensure that the new charging facilities meet the national unified standards. Shanghai proposed to develop universal applicability payment methods, such as mobile payment, UnionPay payment, and transportation card payment, to ensure the compatibility of the payment system.

The page contains the contents of the machine translation.