A major milestone has been achieved in the Energy Superhub Oxford project, as the city sees the installation of the project’s first electric vehicle charging points.
The city’s first 50kW rapid electric charger for ODS’ electric vehicle fleet was installed this week at the ODS depot in Marsh road in Cowley as part of the £41m Energy Superhub Oxford project, led by Oxford City Council and Pivot Power (an EDF Renewables UK company).
The innogy eMobility rapid charger is capable of replenishing a fleet vehicle battery up to eighty per cent battery capacity in as little as forty minutes. A further 32 fast 22kW chargers have also been installed at ODS, marking a significant milestone in the ESO project.
In the future, the chargers will be connected directly to ESO’s EV charging network which will be optimised alongside the world’s largest ever hybrid battery. This will deliver massive amounts of power for rapid EV charging at key locations around the city, including a public superhub at Redbridge Park & Ride.
ODS, Oxford City Council’s wholly owned company, is responsible for delivering all of the Council’s statutory services currently provided to residents and business including waste and recycling, street cleaning, car park operations, parks maintenance and road repairs as well as additional services including garden waste collection, pest control, vehicle MOTs and building services.
ODS currently has 330 vehicles in its fleet, and is aiming to make a quarter of them electric by 2023. In total, 34 new electric vehicles will arrive this year including cars, a street sweeper, an excavator, a mix of different sized vans and a refuse collection vehicle. In April the City Council took the delivery of its first electric vehicles for the project.
Energy Superhub Oxford
Energy Superhub Oxford is a collaboration between Oxford City Council and Pivot Power (an EDF Renewables UK company) which also includes Habitat Energy, Invinity Energy Systems (previously redT energy), Kensa Contracting and the University of Oxford.
The project will see the trialling of the world's largest hybrid battery system (50MW) to support the acceleration of Oxford’s electric vehicle charging capacity and fleets, and to power ground-source heat pumps for residential properties.
The £41m Energy Superhub Oxford project, which was announced in April 2019, received £10m from the government’s Prospering from the Energy Revolution Challenge – of which Oxford City Council was awarded £1,615,169 for its role in the project.
“It’s a great moment for Oxford and the City Council to see this new charging point going in, it’s a cornerstone event in the Energy Superhub Oxford project which brings significantly more power to the city. Every vehicle powered by electricity helps to reduce the council's emissions and address our climate breakdown and air pollution problem. The chargers’ smart technology will also help to achieve smarter ways of working which should benefit the council as a whole.”
Councillor Tom Hayes, Cabinet Member for Zero Carbon Oxford, Oxford City Council
“ODS has been an advocate of green transport for the last decade and whilst we have been slowly growing our electric fleet this project has given us the opportunity to rapidly increase that number and enabled us to include some specialist vehicles. Being a pioneer amongst councils I am very proud of what we have been able to achieve in such a short amount of time and hope this will only continue in future years. We have already been operating a full electric vehicle test centre for the last two years for the ODS fleet and private customers so this will only improve as electric fleets increase.”
Owain Pearce, Transport Manager for ODS
“These chargers, the vehicles that will use them and the information they deliver, will allow us to demonstrate how through research and real life actions, electric vehicles can form part of a smart, local energy system that accelerates Oxford’s journey to zero carbon and benefits the whole community.”
Tim Rose, ESO Programme Manager, Pivot Power
“The chargers gather data about the energy usage of each vehicle. ODS can extract that data and integrate it into third party platforms for management reporting, to understand driving behaviour and identify potential efficiency improvements across its fleet.”
Karl Anders, CEO of innogy eMobility UK
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