Public Funding for Sms Energy Services Limited

The energy market is failing to capture the industrial benefits from the green technology revolution and tackle the climate crisis. We urgently need a REMeDY -- a Revolution in Energy Market Design to match the revolution in green technologies. Our solution is HIVES - a revolutionary new energy company business model to deliver Horizontally Integrated (working across electricity, heat and mobility vectors) Vertical (including generation, distribution, flexibility and supply) Energy Systems. By integrating system operation and supply at a local level, in a way that puts customers first, works for financiers and is regulatory compliant today, HIVES provides a blueprint for a new national electricity system design, beyond the faltering 'supplier hub' model, to a distributed and highly efficient zero-carbon architecture. Project REMeDy will develop the HIVES approach to produce a local energy system design covering the whole of the populous town of Southend that is proven to be replicable in localities across the UK. A major investment prospectus will set out capital funding arrangements for the design, with work on the first major infrastructure projects planned for 2022. This world-leading project will catapult UK industry to the forefront of the global transition to local energy systems.

The Virgin Media Park and Charge project (VPACH) will demonstrate at scale an innovative new approach to building on-street charging solutions for hard to address residential areas using the existing and widespread power and communications network assets of Virgin Media VPACH has an ambitious target of deploying and operating 1200 charge points. Key to providing the scale of this project will be a group of Local Authorities covering 11 local authority areas: they are committed to ensuring that site selection, parking and highways strategy, procurement processes, and street furniture requirements are aligned with the need of the communities to provide charging solutions which will encourage and enable the uptake of EV adoption. The scale of the project is supported by the scale of the existing infrastructure portfolio that Virgin Media has, which includes 170,000 km of ducts and 40,000 grid connections plus tens of thousands of additional cabinets. This will provide the cost-effective foundation upon which a variety of Charging Point Operators (CPOs) can install their open source, fully integrated, hardware and systems. This approach will help minimise new street furniture and benefit from access to a high-speed data communications network for charging apps and EV data offload alongside public Wi-Fi and IoT services such as pollution monitoring and parking management. This project will develop a demand led charging point request process to engage with existing and potential EV owners alongside geospatial planning and analysis to identify the most suitable locations overlaying forecast EV demand, grid constraints, infrastructure costs and Virgin Media's network coverage. The consortium is led by SMS plc in partnership with Virgin Media and is made up of key constituents of the residential charging value chain. Vattenfall Incharge and Chargepoint Services Ltd. are the charging point operators. The Local Authorities led by Phase 1 participants Oxfordshire County Council and West Midlands Combined Authority also now include Worcestershire County Council, Croydon, Southend, Northampton,Wandsworth and Liverpool councils. Technical, geo-spatial planning and grid flexibility expertise will be provided by Cenex, Loughborough University Transport Studies Institute and The UK Decentralised Energy Trading Association (DETA). Innovation in hardware and eMobility Services will be provided by Connected Kerb and GINGER. We are also delighted to welcome Robert Llewellyn's Fully Charged as our communications and events partner.

"The VPACH project will assess the feasibility and then demonstrate the opportunity to build a fully integrated, scaleable and timely EV charging network for onstreet residential parking using the existing and widespread power and communications network assets of Virgin Media as a foundation. This innovative business model would re-purpose and evolve existing infrastructure assets to meet EV Charging market needs, minimise new street furniture and benefit from access to a high-speed data communications network. Virgin Media, which has one of the largest powered communication networks in the UK, has actively been looking at how it can use this street-based infrastructure in innovative ways to support smart city applications such as Electric Vehicle charging, IoT communications networks and a variety of monitoring applications. Onstreet residential parking is seen as a challenging market segment to address for charging operators due to high costs and time of deploying infrastructure, complexities of installation and significant amount of up front capital required. However, exploitation of Virgin Media's deep network of street based residential network assets would provide a significant stepping stone to establishing an EV charging network cost effectively and in a timely manner. Virgin Media cabinets are connected to the grid and also often contain battery backup. This project, led by Virgin Media's metering and grid connection partner, SMS Energy Services, will assess the ability to deliver kerb side EV charging connectivity that is also hardware agnostic. The project consortium contains partners from across the value chain to ensure that the feasibility prepares the ground for a technically, commercially and regulatory viable demonstrator project. The consortium includes Virgin Media, SMS plc, eMotorWerks, Cenex, Loughborough University Transport Studies Group, Oxfordshire County Council and Transport for West Midlands."

Awaiting Public Summary