Energy data and software company Advanced Infrastructure is supporting Local Energy Oxfordshire (Project LEO) by finding suitable locations to introduce public EV chargepoints.
Project LEO launched in April 2019, and its participants included SSEN, Piclo, Origami, Nuvve and EDF Energy. The wide-ranging project includes elements such as EV charging, different energy storage technologies and smart grid capabilities.
The project moved into a secondary phase in May 2020 and was given the green light to participate in flexibility market trials in 2021.
With the project having an emphasis on deploying low-carbon technologies, Advanced Infrastructure has used its spatial analytics and digital twins technologies to provide an energy mapping tool for the project.
This utilises and builds upon Advanced Infrastructure’s Local Area Energy Planner Plus (LAEP+) software service and the Oxford County Council’s preparatory work to collate and integrate a wide range of relevant spatial data.
The LEO-LAEP+ map visualises a baseline of the current Oxfordshire energy system and opportunities to decarbonise. This has helped project partners identify suitable locations for technologies including public EV chargepoints – a key development area in the decarbonisation of the UK.
This has been achieved via the use of data such as network capacity, the availability of off-street parking and proximity to existing chargepoints in the local area.
“The LEO mapping tool has been a strong asset to our EV team. The existing layers provided within the software allowed us to assess and shortlist potential CP sites based on a number of factors including network capacity, availability of off-street parking and proximity to existing chargepoints,” said Krista Middleton, sustainable city projects, Oxford City Council.
“This is an invaluable step saving time and resources in the implementation process. On top of this, we’ve added in our own data layers. This has provided geographical insights to our chargepoint utilisation that was previously unavailable. Through this we can see areas of high and low chargepoint utilisation.”
Last month, Project LEO revealed key recommendations from its grid flexibility trials to create an “energy system of the future”.
The key recommendations included making Local Area Energy Plans mandatory, aggregators being essential for the future of flexibility markets, the standardisation of flexibility markets, the encouragement of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technologies and a holistic behind-the-meter approach.
