National Grid installs 1,000th on-site charger

National Grid has installed their 1,000th electric vehicle (EV) charge point in the UK. 

EV charging solutions provider ElectrAssure and National Grid collaborated to reach the milestone, and installed EV chargers across its substation and office sites.

The 1,000th charger was commissioned at Wymondley Substation earlier this month, to support colleagues and engineers working at the National Grid Electricity Transmission (NGET) site in Hertfordshire. 

National Grid has installed chargers at more than 100 sites across Britain. 

This milestone is part of their new Responsible Business Charter, which aims to have a fully electric fleet for its light-duty vehicles by 2030. 

The charter identifies where the business can have the most significant impact on society, and also includes commitments to increase the company’s workforce and leadership diversity, reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, boost community volunteering efforts amongst its employees and more.

Alun Davies, operations director for ElectrAssure, added: “A contract of this size and scope takes a lot of organising and planning in order to be successful. Both National Grid and ElectrAssure took responsibility for ensuring that the charging required by National Grid’s fleet was provided in the most efficient manner possible while causing minimum disruption to critical operations on substations and critical sites."

He added: “It is evidence of the collaborative nature of this approach that the contract is operating ahead of schedule and with the very highest levels of operational availability post installation.”

In summer 2022, 250 of the charge points were deployed to the Birmingham Commonwealth Games for six weeks to charge the athletes EV transport before being rolled back into the National Grid installation programme.