Council looking to appoint external EV charging provider as councillor points out one installed has never worked

Wrexham Council is looking for an external provider to take over their limited number of electric vehicle charging points, as issues with the systems were acknowledged in a meeting yesterday.

The ever popular ‘Zapmap’ app details public chargers in the area, and shows the limited nature of rapid chargers locally. The app also has public feedback per charger- for example on one pictured above by the Guildhall “Rubbish like every other rapid charger in Wrexham. An EV infrastructure run by idiots…”

Cllr Terry Evans asked in the meeting yesterday, “With everybody going green and buying electric vehicles, it’s important that we put charging points in local communities that work.

“We had one installed in Chirk two years ago. Up until this day it still hasn’t been commissioned. Could you tell me when it’s going to be commissioned? When will these machines be checked on working conditions?”

The Zapmap app reviews note a charger in Chirk “is not connected to the grid”, “not online, completely off and useless” – and one has an ‘update from Wrexham BC’ that apparently notes an engineer would be going out to sort it five months ago. Another quotes provider EVBox as saying it ‘has never been connected’.

The Officer told the meeting they would check the specifics for Chirk, but added, “We are aware that over the years we have installed EV charging facilities at various places throughout the county borough which are provided by different providers. Technology changes quite quickly in this arena and that’s meant that over time, some of them – or if what Councillor Evans is saying is correct, even from the get go, they weren’t the right thing for the right location.

“So what we’re doing at the moment is looking for a provider who will adopt all of our existing EV charging infrastructure, and be responsible for rolling that out. They will then take on maintenance of the existing, and also maintenance of any additional charging infrastructure that they put in place so that we’ve got that one arrangement with one provider.

“Members of the public, members of staff and elected members will be clear when they go to use an EV charging point, what the payment mechanism is, how it works, one is pretty much the same as the next etc, etc.

“It puts us on a much better and more certain footing going forward with that infrastructure.

“So that’s a plan that’s in place at the moment, we’re out looking for that provider.”