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Aug/Sept 2010 www.esb.ie/em

THE LAST WORD

ESB ARE LEADING THE CHARGE

The emissions from ecars are half those of petrol cars! EM speaks to Paul Mulvaney, the managing director ESB ecars, to find out more

Ireland has the opportunity to become a world leader in electric car technology thanks to our unique natural advantages as a small island nation and the work being done by ESB to capitalise on them. The country's first public charge points went live in Dublin in March of this year and this marked the beginning of the roll-out of a nationwide infrastructure that is aimed at revolutionising transport in Ireland. Charge-points will eventually be installed in homes, on-street and along motorways throughout Ireland so electric cars will never be very far from one.

In all, ESB plans to build 3,500 charge-points by the end of 2011 – a combination of 2,000 domestic units and a further 1,500 on-street charge points – and the man with responsibility for this ambitious initiative is Paul Mulvaney, managing director of ESB ecars.

Paul heads up a 12 strong multi-disciplinary team which is working hard at realising the ambitious targets set by the Government for electrical vehicle usage in Ireland – 10% of the Irish motoring fleet is to be electric by 2020.

“We have a fairly mixed team with people from a lot of different backgrounds because that is what you need in this space,” he explains. “We have engineers, we have IT people and we have a marketing manager with a background in the mobile phone sector. We are very keen to have these types of skills. This is a new market and we are introducing customers to a whole new way of doing things. We also have a person with a banking background and we have an economist on the team.”

While it might not appear immediately obvious why such a varied range of talents is required by the team Paul says that the rationale is very well grounded. “It's such a wide programme,” he explains. “There is the infrastructure piece, the IT piece, the marketing piece and the vehicles themselves. For example, the IT is vitally important. The charging point infrastructure is going to be a very open system which that allow users to choose which electricity supplier they want to get their charge from. We need to be able to capture that data and send it to the relevant supplier. We also need to have the payment systems in place. At home the cost will go on the domestic electricity bill while the public charge points will be paid for by a pre-paid smart card.”

He foresees a lot more use for sophisticated IT in the future. “There are a lot of other potential applications that we can offer as well,” he notes. “We could have automated mobile phone text alerts to let people know when their credit is low and apps to tell people where their nearest charge point is and how to locate it. This is a changing market and we are changing people's mobility style and we still have a lot to learn.”

Learning began in earnest in July when a number of ESB staff members took possession of electric cars for a four-month trial period. All told 48 staff members will take part in the trials over the coming two years. “There are only a handful of ecar trials running so we have no one else to learn from at the moment so we want to see how people use the cars as part of their normal lives and what their needs are in terms of charging and so on. We are also carrying out behavioural research with Trinity College Dublin in order to get a better feel for the issues, benefits, pros and cons of the technology.”

The initiative also fits neatly with ESB's target of having 40% of electricity generated using renewable sources by 2020 and being a carbon neutral organisation by 2035

This is how Ireland can become a global leader in the technology. “We are anxious to get ahead and stay ahead. Ireland has unique advantages in terms of the small size of the country and the population. This means that we can roll out the technology nationwide and to the entire population quite rapidly. We already have agreements with Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi in relation to cars and we are going to be able to bring the cars to Ireland earlier than we could otherwise expect thanks to the fast rollout of the infrastructure. We will have ecars available to the public to buy by the end of the year – this is well ahead of other countries.”

The cost of the ecars may be relatively high initially but Paul believes their widespread adoption is only a matter of time. “There are huge savings to be made in terms of fuel costs and this will attract people over time. Two car families will begin choosing an ecar as their first car for short trips and their advantages will become better known and this will drive demand as well. Competition will also drive down costs in the longer term.”

The initiative also fits neatly with ESB's target of having 40% of electricity generated using renewable sources by 2020 and being a carbon neutral organisation by 2035.

“Even with electricity generated from traditional fossil fuel sources, the emissions per kilometre from an ecar are about half those of petrol driven cars. And with Ireland's natural advantages in terms of wind and other renewables a large proportion of the power used by the ecars will in future be carbon free.”

The early signs are good for the ecars project, with charge points being rolled out throughout the country and the first production models appearing on our streets before the end of the year. But none of this would have been possible were it not for presence of a single state owned electricity distribution company in the country. “Because ESB is in this position we can take the social and environmental benefits into account and we can afford to take a long term 25 years view of the project and only look for our investment back over time. This would be impossible for private sector firms who would have to look for a return on their investment over a much shorter period and this would make the technology too expensive for the public.”

ESB plans to build 3,500 charge-points by the end of 2011