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EV owners invited to take part in electricity grid charging trial

Date: 15 September 2016   |   Author: Daniel Puddicombe

Electric vehicle owners in the South West, South Wales and the Midlands are being invited to take part in a trial that aims to ensure local electricity networks can cope with increasing numbers of vehicles.

Known as the Electric Nation project and spearheaded by Western Power Distribution, the scheme involves trialing a smart charging solution between home charging points and the local electricity network to help electricity operators manage the effects of the additional load on the network caused by charging EVs.

According to the consortium - which is made up of charging point supplier EA Technology, DriveElectric, a customer-facing recruiter, Lucy Electric GridKey, which will monitor the activity, and Transport Research Laboratory - the country's grid has enough capacity to power EVs, however if clusters develop and they are all charged at the same time local networks may become overloaded.

"The Electric Nation project will provide the data, and the real-life experience, to enable us to introduce smart charging to manage potential capacity issues due to clusters of EVs charging at peak times. This is predicted to save around £2.2 billion, as well as helping to avoid disruption to customers," said Ben Godfrey, innovation and low carbon networks engineer at Western Power Distribution.

The group is looking for 500-700 current and soon-to-be EV and plug-in hybrid owners and each participant will be given a free home charging point.



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