EVI-X Modeling Suite of Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Analysis Tools (Text Version)

This is the text version of the video EVI-X Modeling Suite of Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Analysis Tools.

[Text on screen: EVI-X Modeling Suite of Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Analysis Tools. Music playing.]

>>Andrew Meintz, NREL Researcher: EVI-X is a modeling and simulation platform that looks at electric vehicle infrastructure.

>>Brennan Borlaug, NREL Researcher: We have tools that are focused on site design, understanding how a charging station might be configured; around network design, so at a very high level, understanding the charging needs within a region and how that might evolve over time. And then finally, we're also focusing on what the cost for developing and designing this charging network might be both from the charging provider's perspective as well as the driver’s.

>>Eric Wood, NREL Researcher: We really believe that charging infrastructure needs to lead the adoption of electric vehicles. And in order to do that, we need to start making decisions now about what the charging infrastructure of tomorrow will look like in order to meet the needs of drivers. This includes personal vehicle owners making daily trips, errands, commuting to work. It includes people taking long-distance road trips out of state. It includes ride-hailing drivers. It also includes heavy-duty trucking and commercial vehicle operations. 

Originally, each of these tools was developed independently, but as they matured, we began understanding the ability to link these tools together to answer deeper questions related to the cost of charging infrastructure, the grid impacts of electric vehicle charging, and also understanding the value of distributed energy resources.

>>Lauren Spath-Luhring, NREL Researcher: The web tools are meant to be easy for anyone. You don't have to have computational power or software or anything like that. You can just come and with a couple of inputs, get a result that will be helpful.

>>Meintz: We can provide that information to state or utility planners who are trying to make decisions about where to put the new substation or what the new distribution line is going to look like.

>>Wood: As a researcher, one of the things that's most exciting about the suite for me is the fact that it brings together so many different kinds of stakeholders. We're seeing investment today in charging infrastructure from electric utilities, from automotive companies, from city, state, and local governments, as well as the federal government. And as a national lab, we're in the unique position of trying to understand all of those positions and incentives and make objective analyses that help meet the needs of all parties and ensure the effective use of investments, both public and private.

>>Borlaug: EVI-X is really a useful tool for understanding how charging needs might evolve over time, looking in 5-, 10-, or 15-year timescales so that you can do proactive planning to be ready to meet the demands of future EV drivers.

One of the core guiding principles within EVI-X is that we try to make as much of our modeled results available for public access and use.

>>Meintz: When you're making decisions today that will impact what we think adoption is going to look like 25 years down the road... that's one of the cool features of this modeling suite, that we can think about those decisions in a way that is, hopefully, future proof.

[Text on screen: EVI-X informs regional, state, and national charging infrastructure deployments. Learn more at www.nrel.gov/evi-x.]