Council’s struggle to get us plugged in
TOO FEW SITES AVAILABLE TO MAKE CAR CHARGING VIABLE
A DERBYSHIRE council is planning to install eight new electric car charging ports but admits it has struggled to find viable sites for the technology.
South Derbyshire District Council asked BP Chargemaster to assess all 16 of the authority’s car parks to find viable spots for electric car charging points.
BP Chargemaster found that only two sites would be financially viable, largely due to the cost of connecting the rural sites to the network.
This included car parks in Repton, Hatton, Findern, Melbourne, Rosliston and Ticknall.
The two sites which were deemed viable were the Rink Drive car park in Swadlincote town centre, close to the Pipeworks, and Arnold Close in Castle Gresley.
Now the council plans to install four dual charging points at the Rink Drive and Arnold Close sites respectively, capable of charging eight cars, each, at a time. Overall, this would cost more than £70,000.
The council hopes much of this would be funded with a grant from the On-Street Residential Charge Point Scheme, run by the Energy Saving Trust, funded by government and private firms. It hopes the charging points would be used by residents looking to charge their vehicles at night or at weekends.
Eight parking bays on the Rink Drive site would be reserved for electric vehicles only between 6pm and 8am. Outside of those hours, any vehicle - electric or not - would be able to use the spots and “therefore the proposal will have no adverse impact on the availability of town centre parking spaces,” the council says.
All of the spots at the Arnold Close site would be unreserved at all times, due to its smaller size, with any vehicles free to park in the electric car charging bays at all times.
The authority says installation of the electric car charging facilities would take three to six months.
BP Chargemaster would be responsible for repairs and maintenance for the first 10 years, after which the facilities would become council property, for which it would be solely responsible.