Intelligent, centrally-managed charging systems must be deployed if the UK is to solve what has been billed as the last “real barrier” to EVs in grid constraints.
The subject of EV adoption was raised at this week’s FT Energy Transition Strategies conference in London, during which Enel’s head of partnerships and innovation Marco Gazzino said that the electric vehicle charging infrastructure could be “much more difficult” to manage than previously thought.
Nissan energy services director Francisco Carranza agreed, adding that the company – which plans to take Italy’s charging infrastructure from the current 3,000 charge points to as many as 10,000 over the next three years – had enjoyed more success installing EV chargers around its Paris office.
However Erik Fairbairn, chief executive at charger manufacturer POD Point, looked to downplay the impact of grid constraints on EV adoption, arguing that it was something that had been “overstated” and suggested that electric vehicles and associated infrastructure could be just as much a solution as the problem.
A report issued by the Green Alliance earlier this year suggested that the UK’s grid network was so unprepared for significant adoption of electric vehicles that as few as six EVs charging in particularly constrained areas during peak demand hours could be enough to trigger brownouts.
Fairbairn said that the answer was to ensure that all charging is done intelligently.
“If we plug all of our cars in at 6:30 at night then we’ve got a peak generation problem, but if we look at the area underneath the peak, if that went across the 24 hour period, we can actually generate in the UK plenty of kilowatt-hours of energy, it’s just we can’t draw it down at the right time.
“So it’s all about having a highly intelligent charging infrastructure which understands what’s going on on a generation perspective, but also on a distribution perspective,” he said.
Such a system would have to be managed centrally and by the infrastructure owners themselves, Fairbairn added, insisting that there was no point in explaining the nuances of charging and managing grid constraints to the end consumer.
”One of my visions has always been the charging points have to be intelligent and communicating centrally, and then the entity has to make sure we’re carefully managing the load, taking lots of inputs and making sure we’re optimising what the grid is capable of,” Fairbairn said.