Electric highways to be modelled with digital twin in GB

Metaverse startup Hadean and the Connected Places Catapult have been awarded funding to develop an e-highways digital twin.

The two-year project with support from a UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) grant is aimed to develop a traffic simulation model on a replica of Britain’s motorways and other roads to determine the optimal locations for e-highways.

Drawing on historical data and scaling for the range of users on the roads, from passenger vehicles to public transport and large heavy duty vehicles, the digital twin also should assess how the e-highways affect the flow of traffic and how the infrastructure needs to be built to support them.

e-highways are not a new concept but are emerging in essence as the evolution of the trolleybus approach – and the road equivalent of the electric railway – as a means of electrifying freight transport with power supplied from overhead cables.

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The system works with the truck automatically engaging with the electricity supply for power and for recharging its battery system and then when moving away, the truck simply continues under battery or other hybrid drive system.

Their implementation is so far limited and still in the test phase in locations including California in the US and Germany and Sweden in Europe, with the first test e-highway in the latter country installed by Siemens Mobility, a leading provider of the technology, back in 2015.

“Although e-highways are being tested, domain-specific expertise of how, where and under what conditions these can be deployed is currently limited,” says Hadean VP of innovation, Chris Arthurs.

“We are excited to … develop a cutting-edge decision support tool to help consultancies and government agencies plan the highways of the future. We also believe that such capabilities will have important synergies with creating a category of metaverse worlds which may require the simulating and understanding of real-world and simulated scenario-based traffic patterns and behaviours, as well as exploring hypotheticals and ‘what-if?’ questions around infrastructure design.”

Alisdair Ritchie, head of the SME development team at the Connected Places Catapult, the innovation accelerator for cities, transport, and place leadership, adds: “Real world testing is extraordinarily expensive and the opportunity to work with Hadean to develop digital twins which can model e-highways in a virtual world at a fraction of the cost is both valuable and a real learning opportunity for both organisations.”

The Catapult’s expertise includes the Centre for Digital Twin-Hub, which was previously hosted by the University of Cambridge.

e-highways in GB

In Britain a study completed last year by a consortium led by Costain reported that a nationwide electric road system is likely to be the fastest and most efficient way to decarbonise the country’s freight sector.

Such a system, the consortium proposed, would consist of overhead electrification wires over the inside lane of key motorways and a nationwide suite of static charging facilities.

The consortium also urged the government to fund a pilot and identified a 40km section of motorway connecting a major logistics hub to a port in the Humber in northern England as an “ideal route”.

The consortium estimated that a national e-highway rollout would remove approximately 5% of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions.