To alleviate parking and charging congestion during the upcoming Spring Festival, the most significant annual celebration in the country, Shanghai has come up with additional photovoltaic power generation facilities, intelligent battery swapping stations and charging robots to prepare for the passenger flow rush.

To ensure that new energy vehicle owners can travel without worries during the festival, State Grid Shanghai Changxing Power Supply Company has put equipment such as intelligent mobile charging robots into use at the Changxing Island Service Area, an important transportation hub from Shanghai to northern Jiangsu, to welcome Spring Festival.

When the charging spaces are full, robots can supplement electricity for new energy vehicles waiting in line to ensure smooth travel. Each robot has a capacity of 100 kilowatt-hours and can charge a new energy vehicle to 80 percent in as fast as half an hour. By doing so, the queuing situation during peak charging periods can be further alleviated, it said.

During the renovation of charging piles, the company also tracks users' electricity consumption needs in time, provides personalized services, and ensures the reasonable layout and efficient operation of the dedicated charging spaces and the intelligent battery swapping station in the service area, it said.

Currently, there are 26 expressway service area charging stations with 144 charging piles in Shanghai. During Spring Festival last year, the total charging volume of expressway service area charging stations in Shanghai reached almost 14.89 million kWh, and it is expected to increase by 30 percent year-on-year this year.