Offered at the point of sale, the grant will reduce the cost of a domestic charge point.
In the scheme, available until March 2013, British Gas will carry out an electrical survey for each customer and give advice on which types of charge point to install. The qualifying charge points will be installed by a specialist British Gas engineer, and come with a home energy monitoring system, which allows customers to see the energy consumption of their electric vehicle and household appliances. Customers taking up the offer also receive three years of Home Electrical Care on their household through British Gas.
The grant is provided through Plugged-in Midlands, which is part of the government’s Plugged-in Places scheme and is run by Cenex and Central Technology Belt. The offer is open to electric vehicle owners across the Midlands, and gives a 60 per cent discount on the cost of the charge point and its installation, as well as free membership to the Plugged-in Midlands Members Scheme until April 2013.
Plugged-in Midlands plans to install more than 250 charge posts in high profile public locations, including shopping centres and railway stations, to encourage electric vehicle users to travel further without fear of being unable to complete the journey home.
The announcement from Plugged in Places and British Gas comes a few days after attendees at Utility Week’s recent Plugging into EV conference called for similar schemes to ensure EV users could charge their vehicles safely at home. Report here.
Utility Week’s special report on EVs provides full details of the UK push towards rolling out such vehicles. It includes details of planning, permission and certification, UK and Euro government policy, government subsidies available and the charging schemes in operation. See more details here.