Community electric vehicle charging

Have you considered installing an EV charger at your village hall or community building? There are many benefits, operating models and funding options for community EV charging.

Benefits of EV charging

Some of the benefits of EV charging include:

• help for local residents who don’t have their own chargers or do not have private parking
• attraction of visitors to your area, who can use other facilities at your building/in the wider community while charging their vehicle
• support of the transition to zero emission vehicles and demonstrating your commitment to combatting the climate crisis

Where can chargers be installed?

Chargers can be installed in the following places:

• village halls and community building car parks - these are great places for chargers as they are publicly accessible and often run events or host facilities that EV drivers can visit while charging
• public car parks that are open 24 hours and are within walking distance of homes - a community charger can benefit these residents, especially for overnight charging (your car park will need to have at least 2 parking spaces that can be assigned to EV charging.)
• near to the electricity supply (typically the village hall/community building) you can keep the installation costs down.

Types of Charger

The following charge times are from an empty battery life to 80% charge of a 60kWh battery.

• “Slow” Charger (3kW)
  • 17 hours
• “Fast” Charger (7, 11 or 22kW)
  • 7kW = 7 hours
  • 11kW = 5 hours
  • 22kW = 2.5 hours
• “Rapid” Charger (50kW+)
  
  • 45 minutes

It is likely that “Fast” chargers will be the most suitable speed for communities looking to serve residents and visitors, providing a good balance between charging speed and cost. Due to their increased power, rapid chargers can often require costly and long-winded upgrades to your electricity connection.

Many EV drivers charge their vehicles over night at home, or during the day at places they visit regularly. This is often done using a lower power charge point as this is usually cheaper and makes good use of time when the vehicle is not being driven.

Funding options

Fully funded

There are numerous charger operators that can offer a fully or partly funded operating model for community chargers. These operators fund the installation, operational and maintenance costs of the chargers, and will pay you a rental fee for the use of the charger parking spaces. They will also tend to take any profit made from billing users of the chargers.

Other funded models are run on a community benefit basis, and are funded through selling community shares which are sold by the charger operator.

If you lease the site it is likely you will need at least 15 years remaining on the lease to benefit from this model.

If you think you have a suitable site, you can apply to these operators who will then consider several points including local demographics, physical location and expected usage before committing to an installation.

Grants

The below grant schemes are currently open for applications and can help cover the capital costs of installing your own charge points. This model provides more freedom in selecting your site than the fully funded model described above, but you will also be responsible for organising billing and maintenance of the charge point.