Avoidable Bank Holiday Misery
Progress Stalled – again. How electric vehicle (EV) drivers are once again being failed during the Great Easter Bank Holiday getaway
This Easter, an estimated 20 million drivers will visit Britain’s roads to visit family and friends or head to holiday destinations. These include electric vehicle drivers, who will collectively cover more than 35 million miles between Good Friday and Easter Monday. This will stress the country’s underdeveloped and inadequate charging infrastructure, which National Highways is letting down EV drivers.
In a bid to avoid the problems that occurred over the Christmas break, when fury over three-hour delays at motorway charging points caused, charging specialist Gridserve has recently issued advice to help minimise wait times. As the company runs the Electric Highway, a network of charging points at motorway services and retail forecourts, this is crucial information for EV drivers.
Gridserve’s advice – don’t block bays, communicate clearly with fellow drivers, choose the charger most appropriate to your EV and don’t charge your battery fully if you don’t need to – is sensible. A trial that involves having on-hand support start at charging points is welcome.
However, the delays experienced by EV drivers are not primarily due to etiquette or staffing issues. The problem is a lack of charging capacity—an immediate solution exists.
Voltz Group is the world leader in Energy as a Service (EAAS) and specialises in supplying mobile EV charging units. Many of this Easter weekend's problems could quickly and easily be solved if portable units were temporarily located at sites such as motorway services where the highest demand is predicted. Additionally, Voltz Group units could be on standby to provide recovery support to EVs out of or low on charge that may not reach a charging station.
Realistically, it’s too late for this Easter, but there will potentially be delays over the summer holiday season and at Christmas when the same pressures will occur. Voltz’s technology, first used at Heathrow Airport in 2017, offers a proven solution to these short-term charging demand issues.
As for the longer-term issue, the approach to supplying EV charging points must be rethought. ZAPME’s parent company, Voltz Group, is pioneering a Business Energy Management (BEM) approach that involves harvesting power from onsite renewables and off-peak Energy and storing it in batteries close to where there is demand. It also ensures that 150kW chargers will deliver 150kW, not 30 or 40kW because too many chargers are connected to an inadequate power connection. In this way, supplying EV charging points can become a source of revenue for the operators of motorway services rather than a cause of complaints.
EV drivers are currently being failed. It doesn’t have to be that way in the future.
