To date, much of the public on-street, low-power electric vehicle charging infrastructure has been government-funded.
According to Dr Sagar Mody, head of commercial for local EV infrastructure at the Department for Transport, this is down to the fact that the infrastructure takes a long time to recoup investment. To scale up available infrastructure, there has to be a business case for private investment, and commercial models balancing public and private risk are needed.
Speaking at Solar Media’s Electric Vehicle Infrastructure and Energy Summit in London this morning, Mody explained that the on-street scene has many stakeholders, which presents a great deal of procurement complexity.
“I had somebody who used to procure things like rocket ships and space shuttles and really intricate stuff in the nuclear energy scene tell me they find this incredibly complex.”
Of course, scaling up available charging infrastructure is fundamentally important to encourage EV uptake; local authorities need enough infrastructure so that those thinking about their next car are confident that there is infrastructure outside their home that is easily accessible and cost-effective to use.
Mody credits the already impressive shift towards EVs in some part to the government’s local electric vehicle infrastructure fund (LEVI), which has replaced the on-street residential charging scheme (ORCS). The latter, being opt-in, saw some local authorities take advantage more than others, resulting in some areas having a greater spread of chargers than others.
Looking forward, local authorities need a robust set of terms and conditions, like a concession model, which invites the private sector in. The concession model, Mody explained, is a shift of mindset for local authorities who have been used to infrastructure being built through procurements and services—”pretty straightforward” contracts—to something more negotiated and has to be managed over a long period of time.
To that end, the Department for Transport is providing authorities with support, most notably through ‘Heads of Terms’, which cover the key terms for leasing infrastructure and the commercial principles behind them.
Mody said it is important to highlight that for maximised scale, the important shift will be to give a long period of time to the private sector, which is taking the risk of bringing capital, to recoup longer-term concessions.
