VolkerSmart Technologies to deliver EV charging for award winning ‘Park and Charge Oxfordshire’ project

Published by

Peter Davison

VolkerSmart Technologies has been awarded a £1.2 million contract with renewable energy solutions specialist, EZ-Charge Ltd, to deliver electric vehicle charge points across four districts in Oxfordshire.

The programme is due to run until March 2022.

The works will form part of the Park and Charge Oxfordshire project, which will see 125 dual 22kW EV charge points locally designed, manufactured and installed across 20 public car parks in Oxfordshire.

Following the project’s pilot installation of six units in Bicester last March, VolkerSmart Technologies will deliver the remaining 119 charge points, along with associated electrical and civils infrastructure and DNO connections.

The units will be situated across district council car parks in Cherwell Valley, South Oxfordshire, West Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse.

Park and Charge Oxfordshire was recognised as one of ‘Oxfordshire’s best energy projects’, with a first prize in the Built Environment and Communities category of Oxfordshire Greentech and Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership’s Energy Pathfinders: 2050 competition.

David Easton Jr, project manager for VolkerSmart Technologies, said: “I am delighted that VolkerSmart Technologies has been selected to deliver this exciting project with EZ-Charge Ltd.

"The new EV charge points will provide a convenient solution for drivers, and help to encourage more environmentally-friendly travel throughout the county.”

Phil Shadbolt OBE, CEO of EZ-Charge Ltd, said: “We are delighted to be partnering with VolkerSmart Technologies, to roll out this prestigious project throughout Oxfordshire.

"This project, three years in the making, offers a unique charging experience provided by the SMART EV chargers, manufactured in Bicester.

"We believe this will set the standard for other local authorities to follow.”

The contract award follows VolkerSmart Technologies’ successful delivery of fourteen EV charge points, as part of Oxford City Council and the University of Oxford’s Go Ultra Low Oxford project.

Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country. An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts. Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.