Electric vehicles: will the lights go out when I plug mine in to recharge?

Electric vehicle charging is a hot topic at the moment. It is well-known that with large numbers of vehicles, the potential impact on electrical supply infrastructure of people just plugging in their vehicles as and when they want to could be significant. Avoiding the existing peak periods is one way of ensuring the electric vehicle load does not significantly increase the overall generation capacity in the short to medium term and in fact can improve utilisation of existing assets. However, implementing such approaches in the real world is not straightforward. There are numerous issues, such as the lack of a definitive standard for smart meters in the UK, user awareness, immature technology for EV charging and complex interactions between the energy supply and distribution companies. This presentation provides an overview of some of the steps that are being taken to try to address this problem in the North East of England.