DCS counters blackout claims: Charging infrastructure requires much less electricity than Oktoberfest

The local energy consumption for public charging is significantly lower than that of large-scale events such as the Munich Oktoberfest, which take place during the same period. This emerges from a current analysis of internal data by the charging network pioneer Digital Charging Solutions (DCS). After Berlin, Munich has the second largest number of registered electric cars nationwide (over 37,000 in July 2024). The city is therefore well-suited to analyze the load capacity of the charging network.

The world's largest folk festival attracts millions of people from around the globe. The number of visitors uses every form of transportation, clearly demonstrating how resilient the local infrastructure actually is. This applies to public transportation as well as the charging infrastructure for electric cars. The latter, despite everything, does not reach the limits of its load capacity. This is also shown by comparing the electricity consumption of the Oktoberfest 2023 with that of public charging in Munich during the same period (September 16 to October 3, 2023). The data on the consumption of the public charging infrastructure comes from an analysis of the network accessible to DCS customers within the Munich city area, which covers 99 percent of all charging points there.

"Our figures now prove that the much-cited fear of a power grid collapse due to the charging of electric cars is completely unrealistic. If a major event with 14 times the electricity consumption of public charging does not cause the power grid to collapse, it will not happen due to the gradual increase in the share of electric vehicles either. On the contrary, electric cars will make a decisive contribution to stabilizing the power grid in the future through vehicle-to-grid technology (i.e., feeding the energy stored in the batteries into the power grid), because they will help to balance the fluctuations in green electricity generation," explains Jörg Reimann, CEO of DCS.