Thursday 9 August 2018

Northern Powergrid rolls towards clean transport future with EV investment

Northern Powergrid is adding new electric vehicles (EVs) to its fleet and deploying charging infrastructure at its offices around the country.

In a bid to encourage the decarbonisation of transport across the UK, the electrical distribution company is investing in 16 new vehicle-to-grid charging points and buying five Nissan Leaf EVs for its staff to use.

The aim is to encourage employee transport to go electric well ahead of the national 2040 ban on new diesel and petrol car sales and test how the low carbon cars fit into the organisation's business model.

It said it will observe how its employees interact with the EVs and study the resulting impact on the network to see how the technology could be more widely adopted.

Northern Powergrid also plans to send out surveys to workers using the equipment to ensure it has the right infrastructure to effectively break down barriers to EV adoption across the workforce.

Jim Cardwell, Head of Policy Development at Northern Powergrid, said: "Although colleagues frequently have to take our vehicles to places where there is no electricity, there is huge internal appetite to decarbonise as much of our fleet as possible, as soon as is practical.

"By using ourselves as a test-bed, we are better positioned to understand how our customers will engage with these emerging technologies.”