A 26-bay EV charging station has officially opened in Falkirk and is Scotland’s largest EV charging station to date. It is located close to the M9 and is a self-service facility which gets 30% of its electricity from solar panels. These solar panels are on the canopy of the charging station and will save around 75 tonnes of carbon per year.
The charging station has 10 rapid charging bays and 16 fast charging bays, with three allocated for disabled users. The charging facility is paid for by the driver through an account with ChargePlace Scotland, a national EV charging network.
The project was funded by Falkirk council, the Scottish Government and the European Regional Development Fund and the overall cost of the project was £1.4million.
The opening of this station follows the news that Scotland is the best in the UK for charging infrastructure as it has 8.9 rapid charging points per 100,000 of population, while London has just 4.9. Scotland was highlighted by the Department of Transport as having the highest concentration of rapid charging points for plug-in vehicles when compared to the rest of the UK.
Since 2015, the number of public charging devices has grown by nearly five times to 2020, with an increase in 11%. In data provided by the EV charge point map by Zap Map, it shows that Scotland has 35 public charging devices per 100,000 which is 19 more per 100,000 than Northern Ireland.
Most of the investment for charging infrastructure in the UK has actually been privately led, with business such as hotels and property developers choosing to install devices. However, the Government set up a £400 million Charging Infrastructure Investment Fund in 2017 to accelerate the installation of public charge points. This fund is made up of £200million of public money matched with £200million of private investment and is used for both the charging infrastructure and the grid enhancements to cope with the higher demand of electricity.
The Falkirk Council was given a funding award to support infrastructure for EV. This fund is going towards the installation of 106 EV bays across the council area. Any remaining funding will be used to add EV to the council’s fleet of cars, including two mini buses for social work and six vehicles for the NHS.
Overall, this news is a massive success for Scotland and gives huge optimism for us to reach our Clean Air targets by increasing the use of EV over combustion engine vehicles.
If you are interested in knowing more about charging infrastructure or life with an EV in Scotland, then please get in touch. A member of our technical team will happily answer any questions you may have. Call us on 0141 280 8890 or drop us an email at info@britetechnicalservices.co.uk.
We also have a variety of platforms available with extensive information about electric vehicles (brite-ev.com), EV chargepoints (evchargepoints.com) and EV accessories (briteaccessories.com).