Charge

Refuelling Tomorrow’s Electrified Transport

Overview

EA Technology are proud to be a partner in the delivery of SP Energy Network’s Charge project. Running for four years throughout Merseyside, Cheshire, North Shropshire, North & Mid Wales, Charge will bring together transport and electricity network planning to accelerate the investment and deployment of public electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure. The project will provide insights into where EV chargepoints may be needed, and how their use will impact the electricity network. This NIC project, which started in January 2019, is being delivered by SP Energy Networks, working with project partners EA Technology, PTV Group and Smarter Grid Solutions.

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An accessible, scalable electric vehicle market relies on well-planned public charging infrastructure.  EV motorists will need safe, reliable places to charge their EVs, whether this is at home, at work, or elsewhere.

Public chargepoints are particularly important for those who do not have a driveway – those who live in flats, apartments, or terraced houses. The project will allow a better understanding of the network impact of different types of chargepoint, taking into account location, the hardware installed, use patterns and whether flexible connection arrangements can be used. Charge aims to reduce the length of time that it takes to bring new large-scale chargepoint schemes to fruition. To learn more about this project, please visit: www.chargeproject.co.uk

Our Role

A key outcome of the Charge Project is the ConnectMore tool, which brings together the project learning and presents this through an easy-to-use web application. EA Technology are leading the development of this tool. We are taking a stakeholder-led approach and developing the software using an Agile framework to ensure that ConnectMore meets the needs of future end-users.

ConnectMore consists of two key elements:

• Heatmaps – these display the electricity network capacity for connections alongside the EV charging demand in order to highlight the sweet spots where predicted future demand coincides with good network capacity.
• Chargepoint connection budget estimator – a self-service tool for instantly generating budget estimates for new connections.

This user-friendly, online tool will enhance the process of planning the rollout of new chargepoints by:

• Presenting a forecast of likely demand for charging infrastructure in a given area for four different scenarios, from 2025 to 2050. This data, from the PTV Group transport model, will show the demand for charging infrastructure in different locations (public, workplace, on-street residential) and hence support decisions on what infrastructure will be needed.
• Assessing if smart charging solutions could be an alternative to network reinforcement.

ConnectMore will allow anyone wishing to connect a chargepoint to access reliable information quickly and easily through the web interface and use this data to make decisions on where it makes most sense to install new infrastructure.  The aim is to accelerate the roll-out of public charging infrastructure where it is needed so that EV drivers are better served with suitable EV infrastructure in their communities and at the places they visit.

To Find Out More

For the latest updates and news on Charge and ConnectMore, please visit:

www.chargeproject.co.uk