Skip to main content

CarConnect to harmonise home plug-in-vehicle charging

The CarConnect project, which aims to help the electricity industry better understand how plug-in electric vehicles (PIVs) charge at home in harmony with the electricity grid, is now under way in the UK. It is known from other projects that clusters of PIVs will have an impact on local electricity networks; analysis from the recently completed My Electric Avenue project indicates that by 2050 the electricity industry in Great Britain may have to invest an additional US$3.6 billion (£2.2 billion) to upgra
May 17, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
The CarConnect project, which aims to help the electricity industry better understand how plug-in electric vehicles (PIVs) charge at home in harmony with the electricity grid, is now under way in the UK.

It is known from other projects that clusters of PIVs will have an impact on local electricity networks; analysis from the recently completed My Electric Avenue project indicates that by 2050 the electricity industry in Great Britain may have to invest an additional US$3.6 billion (£2.2 billion) to upgrade electricity supply infrastructure to customer premises owing to the additional demand from plug-in-vehicles.  

The project will run for three and a half years and will: Develop and deliver an electricity network modelling tool that will enable 6618 Western Power Distribution to identify which parts of their network are susceptible to plug-in-vehicle loads and to assess solutions to avoid network reinforcement works; Develop a method for monitoring the effect of plug-in-vehicles on low voltage networks that will inform the network modelling tool development; Recruit and manage a mass-market customer trial to prove the technical/economic viability of plug-in-vehicle/V2G demand control to avoid or defer network reinforcement.

Set to be the largest PIV project in the world, CarConnect will be working with up to 700 EV drivers in its trials to ensure that such systems are acceptable.

CarConnect is hosted by Western Power Distribution (WPD), the distribution network operator (DNO), and delivered by EA Technology, Drive Electric and Lucy Electric Gridkey. TRL will take on a project oversight role, on behalf of WPD. Funded through the Network Innovation Allowance, CarConnect will find solutions that could avoid the need to replace electricity substations and cables to customers’ homes and workplaces, saving significant cost and disruption to customers.

CarConnect will develop and investigate whether PIV demand control services, that can reduce stop or even reverse charging at certain times of day, can be delivered in a way that meets drivers’ needs for charge for journeys, sharing charge constraints out amongst a wide group of customers and using vehicle-to-grid systems to help in balancing supply and demand.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Do we need a new approach to ITS and traffic management?
    January 31, 2012
    In an article which has implications for the European Electronic Toll Service, ASECAP's Kallistratos Dionelis asks whether the approach we currently take to major ITS system implementations is always the best or healthiest. I was asked recently to write a paper on the technology-oriented future of transport. To paraphrase, I started with: "The goal of European policy-makers is to establish a transport system which meets society's economic, social and environmental needs, satisfying in parallel a rising dema
  • Trials of new technologies to counter age-old work zone challenges
    May 19, 2017
    New solutions are being used to improve the management and safety of work zones on roads both big and small, as Jon Masters discovers. The UK government has recently been going to some lengths to paint a picture of a nation embracing a future of digital technology – understandably given the economic concerns arising from exiting the European Union. In December last year, however, the UK National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) put down a somewhat different marker for where the UK is now in terms of mobile c
  • Increasing road safety with automated driver assistance systems
    January 26, 2012
    Jon Masters looks at how drivers will be trained to use the increasing number of advanced driver assistance systems being incorporated into modern cars
  • Taking tolling towards new opportunities
    May 18, 2016
    Vinci’s André Broto presented his views on how the tolling industry could play an important role in helping authorities ease urban congestion, to delegates at the IBTTA conference. As director of foresight and strategy at Vinci Autoroutes, France, André Broto has been spending some time considering the future of tolling in his own country and worldwide. He presented his thoughts, which include a very different angle of the causes of, and solutions to, congestion at the IBTTA’s (International Bridge, Tunnel