Shell to develop smart EV charging

Royal Dutch Shell is developing smart charging technology in order to prevent battery-powered cars causing blackouts.

The oil firm said that it had tested the service, which intelligently controls when cars draw electricity from the grid, and was drawing up plans for its commercial deployment.

An increasing number of companies are looking at the issue because of concerns that power grids cannot cope with the demand from even modest numbers of electric vehicles charging at the same time.

John Abbott, director of Shell’s downstream, said grid infrastructure presented “one of the biggest barriers to electrical vehicles”, citing a report by the Green Alliance think tank, which warned that plugging six cars in at the same time on the same British street could cause localised power shortages.

He continued: “Shell has been working on a system to mitigate that issue for some time,” he said. “We are developing a smart, connected, charging system that communicates with the grid so cars take energy when there is plenty of it and save our customers money by doing so.”