The UK’s first all-electric forecourt has opened near Braintree in Essex, with capacity to provide rapid charging for up to 36 vehicles at once.
It is the first of more than 100 electric forecourts set to be built in the UK over the next five years by energy company Gridserve. Located just off the A131, the Braintree forecourt features solar panel canopies over its charging points and gets additional energy from Gridserve’s network of solar farms, including the UK’s first subsidy-free solar farm in Clay Hill.
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The site is also home to a 6 MWh battery that helps balance the local grid and can store enough energy to provide around 24,000 miles of EV charge. High power 350 kW chargers can deliver 200 miles of charge in just 20 minutes, with drivers initially paying 24p per kWh of electricity. According to Gridserve this is the cheapest high-power charging rate currently on the market, meaning a typical 20 to 80 per cent charge for an average EV will cost just £10.
“Today’s announcement represents a major milestone in achieving Gridserve’s purpose to deliver sustainable energy and move the needle on climate change,” said Toddington Harper, founder and CEO of Gridserve.
“It’s our collective responsibility to prevent greenhouse gas emissions rising further, and electric vehicles powered by clean energy represent a large part of the solution. However, charging has to be simple and free of anxiety, which is why we’ve designed our Electric Forecourts entirely around the needs of drivers, updating the traditional petrol station model for a net-zero carbon world and delivering the confidence people need to make the switch to electric transport today – a full decade ahead of the 2030 ban on petrol and diesel cars.”
The planned network of electric forecourts is part of a wider Gridserve strategy to drive EV adoption, in partnership with Hitachi Capital. As well as working together on charging infrastructure, the two companies have also launched an EV leasing service that will include free charging at the new stations. Vehicles from OEMs including Mercedes, Audi, BMW, Peugeot, MG, Renault, Nissan, Vauxhall, Mini, VW, and Tesla are available through the programme.
“Our partnership with Gridserve is a total game-changer for electric mobility,” said Robert Gordon, CEO of Hitachi Capital UK.
“Not only are we providing electric vehicles at some of the most competitive rates on the market, but we are at the same time developing a network of rapid, reliable and renewably powered Electric Forecourts that will fast-track the electric vehicle revolution in the UK as we prepare for a zero-carbon future.”
Great idea, we just need 20 or 30 thousand more of them! Only issue is that this will only service around 36 cars per hour. Compared to a potential 10 times that for a moderate sized petrol station. And EVs will tend to require charging more often than a similar sized IC car. Not knocking it at all though we just the quantity ramped by several orders of magnitude, and of course the generating capacity to suit. It may better to site these near HV grid substations, and it will be interesting to see how long they it takes to recharge its own battery! Over the course of any period say day it will still need more power in than is taken out.
It will be interesting to see how all this EV scene pans out in ten years time.
Will I be able to charge my E-bike as well?
The numbers in the article make little sense, the batteries give 4mile/kWh while the chargers apparently give 2 mile / kWh.
This tax-payer funded development (£5m) is an example of the problems that lie ahead as we dive into EVs. The estimated car throughput for the station is 48 cars/ h: a similar sized petrol station processes up to 500 / h. This low rate is fine while EVs are rare, but will become a major problem when they multiply as there will be queues for electricity.
There is also the issue of damage to batteries by fast charging, it appears that this reduces the battery-life seriously. Of course most of the first generation of EVs will be company cars, so the rapid depreciation may not matter, it would to me and any second-hand car buyer!
I would possibly consider a hybrid, which would cover a lot of my local usage cycle electrically, and allow large range for my occasional longer trips, but electric only is a long way off for me.
The article and the comments illustrate the two different realities that exist: the reality of EVs and the reality of peoples real lives. Can these two distant realities be brought together into one ?
Can engineering alone solve the problems preventing take up ? Cost, Batteries, Rare Earth materials, Grid infrastructure, etc.
Can the country/economy afford EVs ?
For aspirations to become reality it needs more than fine words from politicians.
The throughput argument should not be quite as bad as the comments make out. Currently everyone has to get ALL their petrol / diesel from a forecourt.
The idea with electric cars is that the vast majority of charging should be done at home, and you only fill up at a forecourt like this when you are on a long journey which exceeds the range of your EV.
Yes, we will need many more of them to match the likely exponential increase in EVs over the next few years, and the generation capacity to match as well.
Most recharging will be done at home so these are only needed for long distance journeys.
The idea that people will charge at home for the most part is a bit of wishful thinking. An awful lot o f the population don’t have off-street parking, so unless you want a nest of cables running up and down terraced streets there will need to be a better solution.
The issue of recharging an electric vehicles, will not be an issue as technology improves, and innovation proves the answers. We are all aware of the many wireless recharging appliances that recharge with out any physical wires, at the moment it is only when the appliance is a very short distance from the charger, but that distance is increasing all the time. The older members will remember a crystal radio, that draws power from a radio signal to power its self, it is proof the electric power can be transmitted over hundreds of miles ( no electric wires or cords ) . It is now up to Inventors and engineers to make it possible to charge an electric vehicles, any where, and even while the electric vehicle is being used.
@ John Patrick Ettridge
And as we older members will remember ( after the crystal radio was developed into something with potential in the 1920s ), we didn’t go down stupid street & say ‘we will stop all telegraph & postal communication in 10yrs because all future communication must be by crystal radio’ !
Instead we kept everything running in parallel until the crystal set morphed into modern digital communication 60yrs later; another 40yrs on… Morse code & Post are still widely used.
(at least we’ll only get to drive our electric cars half way down stupid street before running out of electric ! )
You mention wire less transmission of electric power, Telsla had ago with that 110yrs ago, it was so successful that the world plumped for the grid system instead, I wonder why ?
Perhaps you could take up where Tesla left off .
I am not sure where you lot are getting your figures from, but a standard fuel station has 8 pumps and it typically takes 5 minutes to stop, fill and pay at the till. At best an 8 pump fossil station can process up to around 96 vehicles per hour. Just twice the capacity of todays EVs in a Gridserve station like this one. In a couple of years, more EVs capable of faster charging will easily match fossil throughput.
Good to see the flat earthers are alive and active. The reference to the crystal radio was to show that electric energy can be transmitted with out wires. The other issue that technology was not pursued, to give an example, it does not seem that long a go that the mobile phone in the early days of development was called a brick, they where that big, but today they easily fit in your pocket. They do far more that be a simple mobile phone, its called progress through invention and research and development. The reason NikolaTesla did not get it further developed was his backers had no way of charging the consumer for the amount of electricity used, but now we do have the technology to monitor consumption.
There is only one problem with EV’s that is proving difficult to overcome, educating the masses! Its only early adopters that are buying them at moment like myself as I am well aware of there short comings, charger anxiety being the main one and having somewhere to charge it overnight which is more dependant on where you live and how close your public charger is.
As the EV becomes more widespread then more chargers will be installed and they will become more reliable and like any technology (apart from Nuclear) the more EV’s produced the cheaper they will become.
Ask yourself this if the situation was reversed would you really want to replace all your battery powered devices with a fuel cell powered device or internal combustion engine? Of course you wouldn’t battery powered phones, laptops and toothbrushes are great, so why not have a battery powered car?
@jack broughton (since the reply button doesn’t work for me), You quote your figures very selectively, there aren’t many filling stations with 36 pumps, I remember the fanfare when the rebuilt Strensham services northbound had the most pumps in the country.
@Nigel Shires. My use of 36 pumps was to match the 36 charging stations mentioned in the sub-heading of the article. I am certainly no expert on petrol stations, but know that I would not wish to have to queue for a charging spot then wait half an hour to get fuel. I would certainly consider a Hybrid to cover local mileage cheaply, but would not wish to be at the mercy of paying the extortionate rates for electrical charging that are already being imposed in service stations.
@ Paul Griffiths
Our local Morrisons has 12 pumps, as do our 2 nearest Tesco’s