The pace of construction of public charging stations for electric vehicles in Slovakia is slower than the European average. However, it is in line with trends in sales of electric vehicles, which account for the smallest share of total registrations in the European Union. For the approximately 10,000 EVs currently driving on Slovak roads, 1,808 charging plugs were available at 740 locations at the end of the year, with a total installed capacity of 82,082 kW. A more significant increase in the number of available sites and charging stations is expected by the Slovak Electromobility Association (SEVA) in 2024, when hundreds of chargers built from the two Renewal and Resilience Plan challenges targeting companies and municipalities will be put into operation.
“Looking at year-on-year comparisons, it is encouraging to see that the biggest increase is in the most powerful chargers – the number of connectors with a capacity of over 300 kW has more than tripled since last year,” says Patrik Križanský, Director of SEVA. Similarly positive are the increases in the number of connectors with a power of over 150 kW, which have seen a 73 percent increase. The year-on-year increase in the total number of available utility connectors is 22 per cent and in the number of sites is 18 per cent. The current overview of the public charging network in Slovakia, in which SEVA collects information from all operators of charging services, is available on the website nabijame.sk.
The summary information published by SEVA on a quarterly basis only captures the number of public charging stations. It should be stressed that on average, more than 80% of charging is carried out at non-public stations – in private garages, companies, office buildings or depots. “It would be of great benefit for the faster adaptation of electromobility if we could also allocate funds from the Recovery and Resilience Plan to support the construction of such non-public stations, as is possible in the Czech Republic or Germany, for example,” says the SEVA Director . Only these chargers, which are not about charging as quickly as possible, allow charging for several hours at night, for example, at the most favourable tariffs. It is the conventional, so-called slow chargers that can become part of smart grids, in which EVs can be used to support grid stability through controlled charging.
“As far as public charging stations are concerned, we expect more intensive growth in 2024. We hope to start the real preparation of the high-speed charging “hubs” that we have committed to build alongside motorways. In addition, two schemes from the Recovery and Resilience Plan for municipalities and for legal entities have been launched, for which dozens of applications have been received, and it can be expected that the entire allocated amount will be easily exhausted,” Patrik Križanský assesses the market prospects and adds: “This is also proof that such programmes make sense, because the money will be used in real terms.”
Out of a total of 1,808 plugs, there were 1,172 AC chargers with an output of up to 22 kW, which is 11.3% more than in the previous year (1,053). There were 455 DC chargers of at least 50 kW, up 36.2% from 334 in 2022. There was a 73.3% increase in the category of DC chargers of at least 150 kW, up from 86 to 149. Connectors with a capacity of 300 kW were relatively the most numerous, increasing from 10 to 32, an increase of 220%. The total installed capacity of charging connectors reached 82 084 kW, an increase of 45.9% compared to 56 266 kW in the previous year.