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The pioneering electric vehicle (EV) project, dubbed 'My Electric Avenue', has announced that Marlow in Buckinghamshire will be the first to partake in their technical trials.
The My Electric Avenue project
The £9m project, led by EA technology and hosted by Scottish and Southern Energy Power Distribution (SSEPD), is the first of its kind. It will provide whole streets with EVs and measure what impact this has on the National Grid. The participants will receive free charging points and equipment, in addition to their Nissan Leaf’s, that will monitor and control the increased demand of electricity.
My Electric Avenue is focusing on how best to manage the network when a large number of Electric Vehicles (EVs) charge in the same street at the same time. It is also the first trial that directly controls domestic EV charging to prevent underground cables, overhead lines and substations being overloaded. The project aims to prove a solution that would avoid the need to dig up the roads to install higher capacity electric cables.
My Electric Avenue set out around a year ago to recruit groups of neighbours on the same street in ten different locations, including some workplace-based clusters, to drive electric cars as part of its Ofgem-supported trial. Marlow is the first of eleven ‘clusters’ around Britain that are currently receiving deliveries of Nissan LEAFs, charging points, and equipment that monitors and controls charging.
Last month recruitment for the trials finished and the next stage of the project is already underway, with Nissan Leafs leased at a reduced rate over an 18 month period, being delivered to a street in Marlow. Marlow is the first of eleven residential clusters around the UK. The others being Chineham, Chiswick, Lyndhurst, South Gosworth and Wylam, with two more in South Shields. In addition, there will be two workplace-based clusters; Slough Borough Council and Your Homes, Newcastle.
Comments on the My Electric Avenue project
Caroline Birkbeck, who is taking part in the trials, gave her view on the project, “The Nissan LEAF is the perfect car for short and medium length journeys. It’s also incredibly cheap to recharge, with running costs of just 10-15% of our diesel car. I’m delighted to be part of this trial, it’s already showing that electric vehicles are an ideal form of transport today, and they are likely to become even more popular as their technology develops in the future.”
So far the project has been a huge success, exceeding Ofgem’s recruitment and customer engagement targets for the trials. A success My Electric Avenue accredits largely to its ‘cluster champions’, who advocated the trials to their local community.