Why Destination Charging Rules

or why AC units everywhere beat DC units anywhere.

A recent episode of the podcast talked about the benefits of destination charging.

There’s lots of talk in the media about the ‘poor charging network’ in the UK (and, indeed, in many other countries around the world). Stories of chargers not working, or failing, or being blocked by other users, or being ICED. These sorts of stories are tabloid fodder for the anti-EV brigade.

Photo by JUICE on Unsplash

It is fair to say, however, that the gap between what the charging networks provide and what is needed is bigger than we would like it to be.

There is one particular Twitter commenter who seems to add something to all of my tweets (or he did before I blocked him) which said ‘We must have national infrastructure, charging every 30miles (Gov policy) on M+A+B roads, everywhere’. I counted that he wrote the same thing in 30 separate tweets in a period of 1 week. He’s also talking about rapid chargers and isn’t interested in any other sort of charging.

Now obviously we’d all like thousands and thousands of chargers every 30 miles along every motorway, A and B road.

But it does bring up several interesting questions about this proposal: The first is ‘Where are these rapid chargers going to be located?’ As Charge Point Operators like Ian Johnston (Osprey Charging) and Adrian Keen (Instavolt) have said on my podcast they can’t just randomly slot a rapid charging hub in anywhere they want in the countryside. They need landlords who give them permission to install the chargers. They need power feeds from a DNO allowing them enough electricity to provide the charge. They need planning permission from the local authorities to actually put this in place (and if you want to add canopies to your chargers that’s a whole world of hurt as far as planning is concerned).

Gridserve are the closest we’ve come to this mythical model and they’ve currently got 2 Electric Forecourts in place with a couple more being built.¹ This is a slow and tedious process. Planning permission alone takes a long time.

But there is an alternate option which does not get the credence it needs in many parts of the media (and EV circles)

Destination charging.