Fully charged!

Dundee is continuing on its road to electric vehicle charging success with more sites to be launched in this environmentallyfriendly city.

With the eyes of the world on Scotland... conversations going on around how individuals can make a positive difference are as loud as they have ever been

Following on from the success of its two multistorey car park charging hubs – which are located at Greenmarket and Olympia – a third and final hub will be opening by the end of the year.

To date, both sites at Greenmarket and Olympia have proved successful with an encouraging uptake of electric car drivers in the city using the fixed charging points at the multi-storeys.

Greemarket was the first of three to built in Dundee when it arrived In September 2019. Located at the top level of Greenmarket multi-storey car park, it has 20 charging bays and 7kw chargers. Solar canopies across the bays provide up to 41kw of energy.

The hub also has an innovative battery storage system, so power created by the solar panels can be saved and used at a later time.

Then in January 2021, the Olympia hub was created and launched at top level of the Olympia multi-storey car park with 20 bays and 10 7kw chargers, all powered by solar. It also boasts an innovative battery storage system.

Now, drivers of electric cars in the city (or those who are visiting Dundee), can take advantage of a new charging hub at Gellatly Street multi-storey, which will have charge points with a total power requirement of around 440kva. Because of a ‘restricted grid supply’, this site presented its challenges, but the scope of the solar and battery provision at this site will be increased, thus making best use of energy generated by solar power and stored within the battery.

Now these three multistorey sites provide a total of 60 charge point connections across the city.

Drive Dundee Electric, the city’s EV campaign aimed at residents and businesses of Dundee, hopes that as more than 50% of the population don’t have a driveway or offstreet parking to enable EV charging, the trio of charging hubs will allow those households to consider an EV as a feasible choice in the future.

Of course, the three multi-storey sites are just the tip of the iceberg as Dundee city centre streets have recently benefit from

the addition of pop-up charging points too. The high-tech devices, which sit around one metre beneath the ground, are controlled by an app and are the brainchild of Urban Electric, which brought the pop-ups to the city.

The first of Dundee’s popup EV charge points was installed on the Waterfront at the V&A museum earlier this year, with more at South Victoria Dock Road.

All four projects have been launched in the last few years and, looking to the future, there are more exciting electric vehicle charge plans to come with a massive development/ expansion to be opened at Dundee City Council’s Clepington Road depot sometime 2022.

Already the Clepington Road site is a hugely successful operation and is home to one of Scotland’s most used charging points. Since its installation, the most used point was the council’s public works department in Clepington Road which was used 5,958 times!

Councillor Mark Flynn,

convener of city development at Dundee City Council, said: “With the eyes of the world on Scotland during and after COP26 climate summit, the conversations going on around how individuals can make a positive difference are as loud as they have ever been. “Our contribution to that in Dundee is to provide infrastructure to support and encourage electric vehicle use and ownership by providing a robust and accessible charging infrastructure for residents and visitors.”

The multi-storey EV charging hubs were funded by the Low Carbon Travel and Transport Challenge Fun, established by Transport Scotland from funds awarded under European Regional Development Fund 2014-20 programme and Transport Scotland funding to support an increased proportion of ultra-low emission vehicles on Scotland’s roads.

The Scottish Government is the Managing Authority for the European Structural Funds 2014-20 Programme.

The new EV charging hub at Gellatly Street multi-storey car park.

A Dundee City Council EV charging at the Olympia multi-story car park.