Electric vehicle smart charging: smart meter demonstration project
Using smart meters to automate charging of electric vehicles.
Smart meters can make charging electric vehicles cheaper and greener by giving consumers greater control over their energy use. Consumers will be able to drive home from work, plug their car in, and automatically charge at the cheapest, lowest carbon point, rather than over the expensive evening peak.
Two projects will demonstrate how smart meters can be used to automatically charge electric vehicles when demand and energy prices are at their lowest – this is known as load control. Shifting demand away from peaks helps to minimise carbon emissions and lowers the cost of energy by using up cheap green energy, reducing the amount of new electricity generation and network capacity required.
Smart meters enable a more flexible energy system and secure, cheap and clean energy, which could deliver benefits of up to £40 billion by 2050. The provision of secure, cheap and clean energy, and a smart flexible energy system is essential to delivering both the Industrial Strategy and the Road to Zero Strategy for decarbonising the road transport sector.
Project funding
Two projects, which commenced in April 2019 and will complete in March 2021, have been awarded a total of £2.7 million. The 2 projects each include design, build, testing and trialling of demand management devices in over 100 households with electric vehicles.
EDMI-led consortium
Bulb Energy will use EDMI’s technical solution which integrates a SMETS2 meter with an electric vehicle charge point. An Auxiliary Load Control Switch (ALCS) will be used for load control. ALCS is a switch within a smart meter, designed to manage an appliance within a property.
EDF-led consortium
The consortium includes ITRON, Nuvve and SLS, and is developing a home area network-connected auxiliary load control switch (HCALCS). HCALCS offer similar functionality to ALCS, although rather than being integrated with the smart meter directly, the switch sits in a separate device and is remotely connected to the smart meter. This project proposes to integrate HCALCS with an electric vehicle charge point.
Get more information about the smart meter load control device trial procurement process.
For further information about the projects, please contact: