THE Lianhua Hill Electric Vehicle Charging Station, Futian District, was put into use on June 8, becoming China’s first transformer-substation-cum-charging-station. In addition, power for the charging station is also provided by rooftop solar panels on top of the charging poles. “It’s getting more convenient for us to use electric vehicles as there is a growing number of charging stations in Shenzhen,” said Wang Dongsheng, an electric taxi driver who was charging his car at the new station. “The charging poles are a necessity for promoting the use of new-energy cars, but Shenzhen is a city short on land resources, making it difficult to construct charging poles on a large scale,” said He Renqiang, director of the electricity-saving service center of the city’s power supply bureau. The site of the charging station, which occupies an area of 3,192 square meters, used to be part of the old Lianhua Hill Electricity Substation. After the substation was rebuilt, the spare space was reserved for the construction of the charging station. Nine 60-kilowatt charging poles and 41 42-kilowatt charging poles were installed at the station, which can supply power to 720 electric vehicles per day. “The development of electric vehicles depends on the wide distribution and appropriate arrangement of charging poles in a city, and the construction of charging stations based on the existing substations is a way to optimize the use of resources and promote supply-side reform,” said Wang Xue, a political adviser in Shenzhen and an associate professor in Shenzhen Polytechnic’s logistics department. According to He, there are over 200 substations in Shenzhen and about 50 of them could be renovated into “substation-charging stations” like the Lianhua Hill Electric Vehicle Charging Station. “We will popularize this new model based on our substation construction and renovation plan, and we are also exploring the possibility of building charging facilities on the rooves of substations or beneath the substations under the ground,” he said. In March 2009, Shenzhen was selected to be one of the first batch of 13 model cities to promote energy-saving and new-energy vehicles. As one of the leading cities in China in promoting the use of new-energy vehicles, Shenzhen has witnessed rapid development in the local electric vehicle market. Over 29,000 new-energy vehicles were put into use in the city last year, driving up the total number of new-energy vehicles to 67,000 in Shenzhen. According to the city government’s plan, new-energy vehicles will account for 3 to 5 percent of the overall vehicles in the city by the end of 2020, meaning that there will be 120,000 to 150,000 new-energy vehicles in Shenzhen by that time. ?(Zhang Yang) ? | 