Charging an electric vehicle is going to be a struggle for many people in the future…
Affordability of a home charge point and not being able to have one fitted being the 2 main issues.
How will the government address the balance?
Obviously, you’ve got public charging points, which, if it was the only option, would see people jostling for position and probably lead to charge point rage.
The other option the government are very keen to progress, is workplace charging. Employers installing a bank of charge points for their employees to charge their electric cars.
We’re sure some employers would charge the electricity used back to their employees, but others would position it as an employee benefit, and way to retain them.
What would motivate a workplace to install charge points for their employees?
The government has a grant system in place called the Workplace Charging Scheme (WCS), where any organisation (if they occupy the building and have designated parking bays) can claim £350 towards the installation of each charge point socket.
Although this scheme allows you to claim £350 for installing up to 40 charge point sockets, it’s more suited to smaller organisations where the installation is not that complicated or costly.
But, with the need to entice larger enterprises to install banks of charge points, next April, the government is adding a game changer (in our opinion) to this WCS grant scheme.
They’re making up to £15,000 available in a grant for each building (maximum of 5) occupied by larger enterprises, to install electric vehicle charge points.
The size of the grant is determined by how many parking bays (in each building) have a charge point installed, with up to £850 available for each bay and a minimum requirement of 5 bays provisioned.
Interestingly, each enterprise can also claim through the existing grant system, giving them an additional £350 towards the installation cost, providing up to £1150 in grants per provisioned bay.
…and this is the reason larger enterprises will now install workplace charge points too.
