THE national grid is used to everyone coming home from work and switching on the kettle. But what about the car charger?
‘My Electric Avenue’ is a project that looks into the future to find out how the electricity distribution infrastructure would stand up to the wholesale adoption of electric cars.
The £9 million project is led by EA Technology and hosted by Scottish and Southern Energy Power Distribution (SSEPD and the aim is to find solutions that will be less disruptive than digging up the existing cables to install higher capacity alternatives.
This project is critical as we move towards a world where electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles are the norm
To do this My Electric Avenue has used ‘cluster champions’ to recruit participants in a local area.
They’ve comfortably exceeded the objective of finding 10 ‘electric avenues’ – clusters – each of 10 participants, where each participant will drive an electric car for 18 months. Apart from a natural curiosity and neighbourly willingness to help, the offer of a heavily subsidised Nissan LEAF might have contributed to this success.
Stewart Reid, SSEPD’s Future Networks Manager said,
“This project is critical as we move towards a world where electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles are the norm.
“Learning how to charge a large number of EVs in the same street without having to replace the cables and substations is key if we are to keep customers’ bills down.
“For me the most significant learning point so far is the relative ease with which these clusters have been created. This says that we are very close to the ‘tipping point’ in the UK where EVs will be a significant part of the mix.”
