In a comment on a previous post I made reference to the Electric Nation research project being run by Western Power Distribution to assess the impact on the electricity distribution network from increased home charging of electric vehicles. The main incentive to participate is that the (up to) £500 OLEV Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme grant is topped-up by Electric Nation with the result that a 7 kW EVSE (Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment “charger” – except it isn’t actually a charger; it just supplies mains voltage to the car’s own built-in charger) unit is typically supplied and installed completely free.
The trade-off is that the team collect data about the usage of the vehicle and the charger and may experiment with delaying charging on cars that don’t need to be fully-charged immediately in order to even out the load on the electricity distribution network.
The model of EVSE supplied as part of the project is the EV-WBM-SMART from eVolt and my installation has been assigned to EV Charging Solutions who are based in Nottingham. Installation is likely to happen at the end of November.