• • • EDITOR’S INTERVIEW • • • Ali Kahn
Vestel looks to work with more electricians to increase the number of EV charger installations
Simon King sat down with Vestel’s Ali Kahn and Ben Hugh to find out more about the company’s work in the EV market
Simon King (SK): What do you think are the main opportunities in the EV charging market for businesses? Ben Hugh (BH): “We have all seen a huge uptick in the number of rapid charging sites rolled out, but we have also seen a huge increase in queuing and congestion at many of them especially at peak times. We see a big opportunity in destination charging which will help ease the high demand on our on-route rapid charging infrastructure. “Most journeys are return trips so a vehicle will be stationary for many hours at the desired location. It may be that to make it back a quick rapid top up will be required due to range not quite being enough or on a longer trip a long charge to ensure you have enough to get back. An increased focus on destination charging is a big opportunity as users can charge slowly and cheaply where they park. This will reduce how many users need to stop mid journey for a pit stop.
“Modern chargers can also be friendly on limited car park supplies by offering load management to charge many cars equally and offering an increased number of sockets. If every public car park had a large bank of reliable, easy to access AC chargers then rapid charger range anxiety may be a thing of the past.”
Ali Kahn (AK): “From our perspective, the opportunities are endless. Businesses installing EV charge points for their fleets will benefit from government grants, utilising salary sacrifice
schemes on offer for EV’s and charging the public for using their facilities. “The hospitality sector, such as hotels, can really benefit by monetising their free car parking spaces. This creates a new revenue stream while future proofing your facilities. Vestel caters for all EV charging infrastructure requirements, from AC Home chargers to DC rapid chargers for public use.”
SK: How do you think businesses are going to adapt to EV – will they be rushing to install chargers in office car parks? BH: “Whilst chargers at the workplace offer a crucial lifeline for those without home charging and for long distance commuters, the discrepancy that’s recently appeared in electric prices between home and business cannot be overlooked. “Businesses need an easy to manage way to ensure employees who do need to use charging at work can contribute to the higher electric price’s businesses are facing. Those with the ability to charge at home will be up to 10 times less than many businesses and can do overnight too. “Businesses may have to look for package deals with installers to get good rates on installing multiple chargers at individual addresses or offer a salary sacrifice on home charger installation. For those that cannot charge at home, load balanced office or depot chargers should be considered. For the road warriors the government is working towards mandating a cross network fuel card like
solution so business users can easily access any public chargers they find and be compensated by work.”
AK: “The rush has already begun, businesses
are trying to make the most of the Government grant offering up to £15,000 contribution towards upgrading their infrastructure and installing charge points. “Vestel offer several solutions to assist in the electrification journey, including our commercial dedicated 44kW dual EVC-10. The EVC10 will allow 2 EV’s to charge at the same time up to 22kW’s (depending on EV on-board charger), as well as our EVC-04 going up to 22kW on a 3 phase supply.”
SK: Why is EV so important for a greener future? BH: “Transport contributed to 24% of C02 emissions in 2020 with 91% coming from road transport. Whilst in recent years our energy sector has moved almost entirely away from heavily polluting coal towards cleaner solutions with new wind and solar developments going online every year.
“Moving to electric vehicles means we can make best use of this transition to cleaner (and independent) power sources. Whilst EVs increase demand on the grid, most of that demand can be shifted to night when most vehicles are stationery and grid demands drops which can be a big issue for our power generation systems especially wind.
Ben Hugh
12 ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING • JUNE 2023
electricalengineeringmagazine.co.uk
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