My Electric Avenue, a project examining if local electricity networks can cope with charging a cluster of electric vehicles (EVs) at peak times, has provided a taste of some of its data at yesterday’s Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership (CVP) Conference in London.

The project is now entering its reporting phase and it already has some interesting facts and figures, including that the trial participants have driven their Nissan Leafs more than 2.7 million km in less than 18 months – almost the equivalent of driving to the moon and back eight times.

My Electric Avenue, an Ofgem Low Carbon Networks Fund project, is testing a new technology, Esprit, which can control the charging of EVs if the local electricity grid becomes overloaded.

The project needed groups of neighbours to come together and each lease an all-electric Nissan Leaf for 18 months, with an original target based on ten neighbours in a cluster, and ten clusters around Britain.

My Electric Avenue exceeded its targets, and there are now more than 100 Nissan Leafs on My Electric Avenue’s ‘technical’ cluster trials, plus more than 100 Leafs on the project’s social trials, meaning that there are in excess of 200 people driving Nissan Leafs as part of the project.

Over the next six months My Electric Avenue will be disseminating its findings so that energy companies, car manufacturers and others can learn from the project.

In the meantime, some preliminary data includes:

• 2.7 million: The distance in kilometres that technical and social trial participants have driven their EVs - almost the equivalent of driving to the moon and back eight times (of course this distance has been achieved with zero tailpipe emissions).
• 94,000: The number of hours that the social trial participants have charged their EVs for.
• 20,000: The number of hours of technical trial participants’ EV charging data recorded by the Esprit technology.
• 17,000: The number of times that the Esprit technology has curtailed charging.
• 5.2%: The percentage of total recorded charging time for which curtailment has operated.

Dave Roberts, My Electric Avenue project director at EA Technology, said: “The whole point of a trial such as this is to discover new learning.

“These initial data headlines show something completely new – never before have electric vehicle drivers had their charging curtailed and monitored in this way.

“We look forward to releasing more valuable facts and figures over the next six months as the trial comes to an end.”

My Electric Avenue is being delivered by EA Technology. Other project partners are Scottish and Southern Energy Power Distribution Limited (SSEPD) (the host Distribution Network Operator, or DNO), Nissan (EV supplier), Fleetdrive Electric (EV rental programme management), Zero Carbon Futures (charging point network developer) and Northern Powergrid (participating DNO).