In June 2022, I collected usage data of charging stations in Montreal from the main networks in
Montreal (Circuit Électrique, Flo, Chargepoint). I scraped the results every 30 minutes — 24h for 7
days — from semi-open APIs, with the objective of better understanding the charging station
occupancy trends across the city. In total, information from 2,410 ports in 1,062 charging stations
was collected.
Findings
Several findings can be highlighted from the data analysis;
Most of the stations with the highest occupancy rates are located either downtown, in dense
areas or on commercial arteries.
The stations with the highest occupancy rate include the indoor garage at McGill University
(52%), as well as the charging station at the Montreal airport (75%). It would be interesting to
validate whether these institutions have EV from their fleet that stay charged for part of the
day or night, contributing to the high rates.
The heatmap above shows the occupancy density per hour of the day for the duration of the
collection. It also reveals that the busiest times are between 8am and 8pm on weekdays.
For the study period, the two peaks where nearly one-third of the total number of ports were
occupied were at 10:00 am on Thursday and 7:00 pm on Friday.
Weekend occupancy rates appear to be lower.
The graph above illustrates the average usage trends for a weekday, relative to the location of
the stations.
It appears that the stations located near restaurants are on average the busiest, with peak
usage at noon. For the week studied, 39% of ports near restaurants were in use at 12:30.
On-street and retail (off-street) stations more or less follow the average curve.
Regardless of location, we can see that station use increases in the early morning, with some
fluctuations throughout the day, and a clear reduction after 8:00 pm.
