Plugged in: EDF Energy and car manufacturer Toyota joined forces to launch a trial of electric charging points

The development of electric vehicles offers a massive new market for electricity suppliers, and a way for the public to shift from fossil fuels to a lower carbon emission mix. But could the network cope with 26 million vehicles? Janet Wood reports.

Last year, National Grid looked at the big numbers on electric cars and decided that the generation and transmission system could cope with the likely rollout.

The transmission network operator reckoned that by 2020, the country's tea time peak load could be increased by around 2GW, as car owners came home from work and began to recharge their cars. That is no bigger than the extra generation required to cope with, for example, half-time on Cup Final day.

However, when it comes to rolling out electric cars to replace all the country's 26 million vehicles, there are many more issues to consider. National Grid itself pointed out that rather than charge cars at peak times, drivers should be encouraged to take their fuel on board at times when demand was low and generation high. At the moment, that is fairly simple: consumers know that wholesale electricity is cheaper at night, especially those who benefit from the savings if they are on an Economy 7-type tariff.

Smart meters should begin to give consumers the ability to make a decision about when they plug in at home. But that choice will become more complicated.

The old understanding about night-time cheap rates will disappear when more of our power comes from wind and other renewables. Consumers will have to add the weather into the equation - incidentally, given the reliance on offshore wind, making the shipping forecast of immediate interest to the general public.

Managing extra load

Price signals and smart meters will help drivers manage their recharging and that will help manage this extra load. But there will still be times when the load from cars adds to the peak and presents a management issue. After all, many car users will not have a choice about when to "fill up". Nor is it clear, yet, how battery and charging technology will develop. Will drivers be content to charge over several hours? Or, as seems likely, will many users want to recharge as fast as possible - whether that is minutes or seconds? That will mean system requirements could change radically.

Meanwhile, electricity utilities and the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) have begun examining the practicalities of installing a charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, alongside other organisations such as the Office for Low Emission Vehicles.

The fact that electricity is delivered to every street and home in the UK makes this seem simpler than it is. In truth, using the existing network is not good enough. It is not possible to assume that every car owner can plug their car into a socket in the garage each night. Nor is it possible to imagine millions of leads trailing across the pavement - even if the car owner has managed to find a parking spot outside their own building.

Does that mean dedicated charging posts? Undoubtedly, in public places and alongside workplace supplies, as well as new means of charging from the home supply. Issues of accessibility, safety and security - including theft - have to be considered, alongside the purely technical and financial issues.

Even the hugely ambitious rollout of smart meters, complex as it is, at bottom means installing one fixed asset in another. An electric car charging system may be much more complex.

The ETI's role is to accelerate the development of low-carbon technologies. Last week, it announced plans to ensure that electric vehicles can be charged from a single network.

The ETI's £11 million plan will bring together major players developing recharging networks, including IBM, Siemens, Elektromotive, Coulomb Tech­nologies and 365 Energy. Together, they will make sure that recharging points from different suppliers are all compatible. They will also look at consumer attitudes to plug-in vehicles to help develop incentives that will make them attractive to the mass market.

The Joined Cities initiative

The group will work with Birmingham, Coventry, Glasgow, London, Middlesbrough, Milton Keynes, Newcastle, Oxford and Sunderland in an initiative known as Joined Cities to ensure the resulting network is truly national.

Meanwhile, attempts to develop a sufficient mass of electric car charging points - enough to convince users to switch - are being spearheaded by the government's Plugged-in Places initiative. The Department for Transport is consulting on this £30 million scheme now. It is planned to bring together consortia to install charging points in streets, carparks, and in commercial, retail and leisure facilities in up to six cities.

Electricity utilities have been quick to join the push to develop electric vehicles. Their reasoning is clear: charging electric vehicles offers a massive new market for suppliers. But there is also an opportunity for the public: to shift from fossil fuels to a mix that, if not carbon-free, offers much reduced emissions.

EDF Energy, for example, announced trials with motor manufacturer Toyota. Vattenfall and RWE have both announced plans for charging networks in Berlin, working with BMW and Mercedes-Benz, respectively.

With such programmes under way, the importance of initiatives such as the ETI's become clear. To make the most of the switch to electric vehicles, charging systems must be compatible for all vehicles. What is more, they must be international.

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