Do DNOs hold the key to accelerating drive for a ‘cleaner, greener and more stable future’?

New governments bring fresh thinking and renewed vigour to initiatives that generally have cross-party support, such as the transition to green energy, the focus on renewables and the urgent need to reduce the world’s carbon emissions.

While there may be differences in how a new global norm is achieved, there will be few who argue that a world that is no longer dependent on fossil fuels is a good thing. It’s the journey that may differ, rather than the destination, and electric vehicles (EVs) are very much part of the conversation.

Growth in EV car sales has been increasing, and indeed September was a record month. This isn’t some kind of fluke or anomaly. The numbers have been rising steadily and assuredly month on month, proving that the reported dent in consumer confidence is not evidenced by the facts and, if anything, is greater than it has ever been before. Over the past 12 months the average number of new electric cars registered each month is more than 28,500 and there are to date more than 1.25m fully electric cars on British roads. These numbers will continue to rise as new models become more affordable and the charging infrastructure expands to meet demand.

So as we head towards Labour’s first and much anticipated budget, what would we most like to see from our new government and its people?

Perhaps the one thing we would like to see above all is certainty. Speaking at the Evie summit in October, Labour’s Minister for the Future of Roads, Lilian Greenwood, outlined the government’s vision for clean transport, stating that ‘it’s not just about the conversation, it’s about action’.

In the same speech she re-iterated a Labour manifesto commitment to ‘phase out new cars that rely solely on internal combustion engines by 2030’ and talked about ‘accelerating the roll out of charging infrastructure’. She also confirmed the need for consumers to have access to ‘affordable and trustworthy’ EV charging in accordance with the new public chargepoint regulation.

What happens next is key, turning a ‘conversation’ into something meaningful and tangible. We cannot ignore a current stream of negativity around EV adoption and lack of infrastructure among a vocal minority that needs to be countered, vigorously and with conviction, before falsehoods are allowed to become established as fact. Well-meaning words from the government, therefore, need to be evidenced by progress, or they may quickly feel empty.

Of course there are practical steps that can also be taken. Easing the planning laws will certainly help; waiting for a planning application to be approved wastes precious time and money, for everyone concerned. But the biggest barrier to real progress, and the elephant in the room, remains the challenge of getting power to the chargers installed, and that is in the gift of the Distribution Network Operator (DNO).

While much work has been done to regulate Chargepoint Operators (CPOs), and measure their performance in terms of equipment uptime, accessibility and customer service, DNOs appear to have limited scrutiny, oversight or service level agreements (SLAs).

That’s certainly not to vilify DNOs, or oversimplify a complex supply chain, but the challenge is very real. The typical wait for power averages six- to nine-months and sometimes up to a year. Within our own investment business, for example, of the total number of new ultra rapid assets already in the ground, only 15% have so far been connected to power.

Such an apparent lack of urgency reflects badly on the industry, and feeds those looking to support a negative narrative about the speed of infrastructure rollout. The challenge is not whether we can get sufficient volume of chargers into the ground, it is how quickly they can be energised and made operational. Every day that a charging point remains idle has a potentially negative impact on EV adoption rates and damages consumer confidence, neither of which are desired by government or privately funded CPOs alike.

The brutal truth is that without SLAs, with which everyone can be agreed, the speed of EV infrastructure rollout will always be determined by the DNO, and not the CPOs, unless and until a better process is introduced. Which means the biggest single support the government could provide is to address the control that DNOs have over the infrastructure providers.=

If they achieve this, then the ‘cleaner, greener and more stable future’ that Lilian Greenwood seeks to attain will more speedily become a reality.

Justin Meyer, Managing Director – SWARCO Smart Charging Ltd.