Worcestershire Parkway station sees 26 chargers arrive

RAW Charging has announced the installation of 26 smart-charging points at the new Worcestershire Parkway Railway Station in the UK. The company also says they have plans for more charging stations at 2,000 sites over the next three years.

And not just plans but agreements in place. But first to the Worcestershire Parkway station in Norton. Part of Great Western Railway’s (GWR) network, Worcestershire Parkway is the first new railway station in the county for more than 100 years. The new station is to increase connectivity to London, the Midlands and South Wales and now offer electric vehicle drivers options to charge their cars.

GWR’s head of Sustainability, Amie Coppin, said: “We set out to find a delivery partner that would enable us to provide the best EV charging experience for our customers, allowing station users to take full advantage of the range of services on offer, and to make more sustainable choices about how they can travel.”

RAW’s key account manager, Neil Broadbank, called the installation a “flagship project”, prompting us in the newsroom to expect the planned charging stations yet to come may be connected to GWR that belongs to First Group as well.

Indeed Broadbank added that RAW was working on “dozens of other railway station projects” and that “it has been key to consider the different use cases when implementing the design and installation of EV charging infrastructure.” Broadbank further described a railway operator’s critical issue, namely “the issue of ‘idle’ chargers, when commuters plug-in and leave their EVs for extended periods, thus resulting in both a lack of opportunity for other drivers to charge and a stranded investment for the charging station owner at the point a car is fully charged.”

To tackle this, RAW said they installed a large number of chargers to meet future demand “rather than installing on a reactive basis”. Plus, they are trialling several different pricing and access structures using the ChargePoint platform.

“For example, we have looked at the standard per kWh fees, combined with parking fees, flat rates or connection fees for extended periods; and different rates for customers, different groups of chargers on site, and lots of other options, all of which can be run simultaneously and changed or scheduled remotely,” the manager explained.

RAW Charging is a so-called European Signature Operating Partner of ChargePoint and claims to have agreements in place to install RAW chargers at more than 2,000 sites across the UK over the next three years.

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