Procuring plug-in points

Myles Barker and Robert Evans from the UK Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment Association give insight into a new procurement guide which offers practical advice for fleet operators preparing to buy electric vehicle charge points

If you are considering installing charge points on your premises, a newly issued procurement guide, authored by the UK Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment Association (UK EVSE), offers practical advice for fleet operators. Entitled Making the Right Connections and available as a free download at ukevse.org.uk\resources, the guide will be the first in a series of independent reports and best‑practice guidance that the industry body will be producing to support UK e-mobility.
   
The guide has three key features. Firstly, it is written in layman’s language using an accessible conversational style, which will benefit readers with differing levels of knowledge about charge points and supporting services. Secondly, the guide focuses on providing a structure to a charge point project through the use of six ‘Ps’, namely: Placement, Product, Price, Pay As You Go, Project Management and Publicity. Thirdly, the guide includes a series of handy hints designed to help the project manager avoid common pitfalls and thereby save time and money.

What’s driving up charge points? 
After a slow start, plug-in vehicle sales have taken off in the UK. Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) data shows that over 6,100 new plug-in vehicles were registered in March 2015, compared with 1,211 in the same month in 2014 – a fivefold increase. There are now around 30,000 plug-in vehicles on UK roads, a far cry from the few hundred present as recently as September 2011. Given the wide choice of batteries for electric and plug-in hybrids and the benefits in lower taxation and fuel costs, company car drivers and fleet operators are now joining pioneering motorists in embracing EVs.

Limited charging infrastructure, feeding motorists’ range concerns, has been seen to be the second of two key barriers to electric vehicle uptake, after high vehicle prices. The price barrier is being overcome through the introduction of plug-in vehicles of all shapes and sizes, backed by developing supply chains that are generating economies of scale in manufacturing, as well as by competitive market pricing from the leading brands. The infrastructure barrier is being addressed, in part, by the beginnings of a national infrastructure, made up of networks of charge points, deployed by both local authorities and private organisations, to help motorists charge on the go. The national coverage of publicly accessible charge points can be seen on charge-point maps such as Zap Map, which hosts the UK’s National Charge Point Register and includes 8,260 charge points at 3,181 locations in the UK. In addition to these charge points, there are many additional points installed that do not show on the maps, as these are dedicated to supporting business premises and fleet operations. The first phases of infrastructure roll-out were supported in large part by grant schemes, but the next wave of charge-point installations will be business-driven investments, the economics of which depend on time and cost efficient management of the procurement of charge points, their deployment but also importantly, their whole-life costs including, where appropriate, self-sustaining revenue streams based on payment for vehicle charging.

Technical expertise
The pioneering technology provider companies supporting e-mobility in the UK are focused in providing the technical and commercial services that investors in electric vehicle supply equipment require and in 2013, the leading providers to the sector formed UK EVSE, the UK Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment Association. UK EVSE Members include the main suppliers of charge points active in the UK market, as well as the suppliers of supporting back-office services that help link charge points into networks with common means of access and use, whether located in towns, cities, motorway service areas, railway stations, hotels, supermarkets or at business premises. Members of the UK EVSE include Bosch, ChargeMaster, ChargePoint Services, Charge Your Car, Charging Solutions, EC Charging, Elektromotive, Evolt (APT Technologies), Hangar 19, Rolec Services, Siemens and Cenex, with Cenex providing secretariat support for the association.
   
The UK EVSE procurement guide aids to provide present and future customers with accessible best practice advice and support. The common procurement pitfalls highlighted and addressed in the guide include poor siting of charge points, prioritisation of price over quality, failure to consider warranty arrangements, poor project time management, failure to consider energy supply requirements, and failure to consider access to and ongoing maintenance of charge points, as well as to make drivers aware of the charge points and how to access them. 
   
The guide also covers aspects of the management of charge points, including how to avoid issues such as ‘out-of-order’ charge points, ICED charge-point parking (in which internal combustion engine vehicles park in EV charging bays without using the charging facilities) and aggravation between EV drivers where available charge points are limited. 

Careful consideration
Members have always sought to provide customers with good advice. However, too often in the past charge points have been treated as commodity products in tender documents, with some purchasers having chosen to skip an effective pre‑procurement dialogue and planning phase. As a consequence, those purchasers have sometimes stumbled through the multiple stages of charge-point projects, rather than identifying and planning for those processes in advance. Any cost savings targeted through a limited focus on charge point price can quickly turn into an overall project cost overrun that could have been avoided, had a full set of performance requirements and evaluation criteria been included in the tender.
   
The aim of the guide is to respond positively and proactively to the needs of customers. The UK EVSE are keen to ensure that purchasers ask for all the information they need from the charge-point supplier, installer and network operator when planning a project. It is also keen to ensure that purchasers apply quality criteria to all aspects of their operational requirements. Association members are fully committed to providing customers with evidence of sector experience, equipment uptime and the specifics of the network operator’s business model. They know that these considerations generally end up helping the purchaser make the right decisions for the EV-charging support that they need for their own operations or that they want to make available for wider access and use. 

A true layman’s guide
The UK EVSE is aware that many organisations are considering either adding EVs to their fleet operations or making their business premises more EV friendly for staff, customers and suppliers. With this in mind, the UK EVSE wanted to provide a true layman’s guide to charge-point procurement. The guide is both comprehensive and accessible. Based on positive feedback received to date, the UK EVSE hopes this will be an invaluable guide that will help fleet managers achieve better procurement outcomes, thereby saving time and money in the long term.

The UK EVSE guide can be downloaded from www.ukevse.org.uk