OVO Energy, one of the UK’s independent fully renewable Energy providers, has just announced their new ‘EV Everywhere’ scheme.

They’ve partnered with Chargemaster to bundle together household energy from renewable sources with access to over 5,000 nationwide electric vehicle “EV” charge points.

The number of EV charge points throughout the UK has risen hugely over the last few years in response to demand from EV owners, with Waitrose, Adsa, Lidl and Co-op all promising to increase the number of EV charge points already available to their customers and Bristol City Council installing charge points throughout the city.

OVO’s announcement comes days after the government pledging to invest £264m in energy storage. The UK are determined to become pioneers in battery storage and this is reflected by OVO working towards a complete ‘grid smart’ charging solution for EVs, which will ultimately enable EVs  to act as mobile batteries both at home and on the go, selling back unused energy to the grid. It’s likely that we’ll see other energy providers starting to offer similar packages in the not too distant future.

To accelerate the transition to smart charging, OVO have acquired Indra Renewable Technologies and ChargedEV. They are aiming to launch what they call a “game changing” smart charger later this year. At Stephens Scown, we’re experts in smart grids, supply contracts, grid share agreements and everything in between, so we’re looking forward to seeing what OVO can achieve.

Energy suppliers ENGIE have also recently pledged to invest £600,000 to begin switching to a fleet of electric vehicles, aiming for 20% of its vehicle fleet to be electric by 2020 and zero diesel vehicles by 2025.

Many car manufacturers are embracing the transition to electric vehicles, with Jaguar releasing it’s first all electric car, the  i-Pace, in 2018 and Volvo pledging to make all its new vehicles electric or hybrid from 2019.

We’re expecting most car manufacturers to head in the same direction in the coming years in preparation for the ban on conventional petrol and diesel vehicles from 2040. The legal implications of green technology progression extend beyond the Energy sector – our specialist Intellectual Property team are ready to take on the challenges arising from design and technological protections that go hand in hand with the introduction of EVs.

The Energy team at Stephens Scown are passionate about the EV movement and have a wealth of knowledge on energy production, storage and export. We are using our technical expertise to advise our clients on smart grid and storage projects at both a residential housing level and on a commercial scale. Why not get in touch and ask us how you can benefit from the smart grid movement?