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Charging or refuelling needs for trucks in Scotland

Project background

Transport Scotland commissioned the Centre for Sustainable Road Freight (CSRF) at Heriot-Watt to work with fleet operators to understand where future zero-carbon charging and fuelling infrastructure is most urgently needed.

This project:

  • Determined broad locations where on-route charging or refuelling facilities should be developed.
  • Provides recommendations for investors on how locations should be prioritised and phased.

The final report on this research has now been published. It used a high-quality sample of road haulage data representing 2% of the 30,000 HGVs registered in Scotland. Using this data, our researchers employed an advanced ‘agent-based’ model to determine precisely where en route charging stations should be located for Battery Electric Heavy Goods Vehicles (BEVs) across Scotland.

Agent-based modelling is a computer simulation technique that models how individual agents – such as people or entities – interact with each other and their environment. Data was kindly shared by AMEY plc, Barratlantic Ltd, The Cress Company (Scotland) Ltd, James Jones & Sons Ltd, PSI Production, Scottish Water, and William Nicol (Aberdeen) Ltd, amongst other organisations. We are also happy to acknowledge the support of Scottish Forestry, the Scottish Wholesale Association, and South East of Scotland Transport Partnership (SEStran).

The key findings of the final report are that the en-route charging infrastructure needed for all HGVs in Scotland will:

  • Comprise at least 63 en-route charger locations, of which 23 are already built or under development.
  • Experience heaviest usage on the M74 and A9 corridors, with the two busiest charger sites needed within an approximate 5km radius of Annandale Water and Dalwhinnie.
  • Require at least 1.3TWh of electrical power.
Volvo electric trucks awaiting charge showcasing innovative technology and environmentally friendly design.

Our final report follows our initial report on the first phase of work. This work was based on a small sample of HGV fleets in Scotland. The original report showed that:

  • Whole fleet Battery Electric HGV (BEV) operation is possible for current routes, provided depot and en route charging infrastructure is developed in key locations across Scotland.
  • Based on data included to date, prioritising shared charging on the A9, A90, and M74 corridors maximises the impact for these BEV operations.
  • Most modelled routes can be completed with no additional stops for charging and, in the worst case, diversions to charge of no more than 15 km.
  • Even when considering only a small proportion of Scotland’s HGV fleet, considerable mitigation for increased peak grid demand, such as reinforcement of grid connections, will likely be required.
  • The mapping of locations for hydrogen refuelling is more uncertain than for charging due to its earlier stage of technology maturity and the potential need to site fuelling alongside hydrogen production. Hydrogen refuelling distributors indicate that hydrogen in individual depots will not be commercially viable and shared fuelling sites are required.

Get Involved

This analysis is ongoing and will be updated as new datasets become available. Additional journey data from HGV fleets is invited to further enhance the analysis.

For more information on the telematics data required, as well as details on how the data will be stored and anonymised, please contact Dr Dhanan Utomo on d.utomo@hw.ac.uk and cls-info@hw.ac.uk.

Transport Scotland is developing a forum for fleet operators, charge point operators, financiers and others interested in developing energy infrastructure projects for HGVs. If you are interested in joining this forum, please email FleetsandInfrastructure@transport.gov.scot.

The forum will enable hauliers to express interest in specific locations and understand the potential commitment asked of them. It may build sufficient interest for specific locations to move to development stage.

Those considering installing charging infrastructure at some point in the future should contact their DNO at an early stage to understand what information is helpful in securing the power required.

Please see our FAQ section below to learn more and find out how to share your journey data.

Governments do not have adequate data on HGV movements in Scotland. To understand where future charging and fuelling infrastructure will be needed, we need to work with road haulage operators to understand how HGVs currently move through Scotland. This tells us where infrastructure should sensibly be located en route. The Heriot Watt research team combine this data so that no individual company’s information can be deduced from the model outputs. We use your company’s data as input to our models to find out the most critical re-charging/ refuelling points for the Scottish road network. Look at our latest report to see what we have learned from the data we have received so far.