Motorists buying or leasing a new electric car – including pure EVs and plug-in hybrids – are invited to become part of the Electric Nation project. The initiative is looking for 500-700 electric vehicle drivers to be part of the world’s largest trial of its kind, to ensure local electricity networks can cope with increasing numbers of EVs.
The project is now recruiting owners of a range of makes and models of electric vehicles and participants will benefit from having a free smart charger fitted.
Initially the trial will take place in the Western Power Distribution network areas in the South West, South Wales, West & East Midlands.
The Electric Nation project was officially launched at the UK’s leading low carbon vehicle event, LCV2016, at Millbrook Proving Ground.
Electric Nation is trialling a smart charging solution between domestic charge points and the local electricity network to allow the numbers of electric vehicles (EVs) in the UK to increase, so avoiding the cost and disruption involved in upgrading local electricity infrastructure.
Electric Nation is the customer-facing brand of CarConnect, a Western Power Distribution (WPD) and Network Innovation Allowance funded project. WPD’s collaboration partners in the project are EA Technology, DriveElectric, Lucy Electric GridKey and TRL.
The UK electricity grid has sufficient capacity to deliver power to electric vehicles. However if clusters of EVs develop in local areas and they’re all charged at peak times then some local electricity networks may become overloaded.
The previous
My Electric Avenue project tested monitoring and control technology by recruiting clusters of EV users; all people in a cluster were fed by the same local electricity substation feeder, and just one type of electric vehicle was involved in the project.
Gill Nowell, Senior Consultant – Smart Interventions at LowCVP member, EA Technology, says: “My Electric Avenue showed that around 32% of local electricity networks will require intervention when 40% – 70% of customers have EVs. Electric Nation is now addressing this challenge by trialling a smart solution with a diverse range of plug-in vehicles and charging rates.”
Mike Potter, Managing Director, DriveElectric concludes: “Motorists who are in the process of buying or leasing a plug-in vehicle are encouraged to visit the Electric Nation website and become part of our project. They will get a free smart charger, but most importantly, they will be helping to future-proof Britain’s electricity networks to facilitate the continued uptake of EVs.”