More than 100 new electric vehicle (EV) charging stations are to be installed across Glasgow in the next 12 months.
By December 2022, the city council had implemented 334 live charge points across 173 units for public use in Glasgow - more than any other Scottish local authority.
These included “off-street” hubs and 16 “Rapid” units that charge more vehicles by 80% in around 30 minutes.
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A report presented to members of the environment and liveable neighbourhoods committee yesterday informed members that a further 119 charge points across 63 units are currently planned to go live this year.
It also confirmed that in the 12 months between January and December 2022, 15,800 unique public driver accounts had used Glasgow’s EV stations just under 160,000 times, consuming 3.05 million kWh.
The expected annual consumption in 2023/24 by the public on the council network, assuming all units in the pipeline have been installed, is around 5 million kWh.
In April 2021, members of the City Administration Committee, approved a new charge point policy, the introduction of a tariff and an overstay fee for EV drivers consuming electricity at one of the charging stations in Glasgow.
But the implementation of the tariff, which scale is yet to be determined, has been delayed. Plans are now in place to take the tariff live in the coming financial year.
During the meeting, Labour councillor Jill Brown, said: “You have mentioned that there are 15,800 unique driver accounts that have logged into the system.
“How many electric vehicles do you think we have in the city of Glasgow? How many of those driver accounts are residents compared to visitors to the city?
“[I also want to know] what assurances you can give us that these charging points will be more evenly distributed across the 23 wards in the city and they won’t continue to be heavily located in the same old wards that have a very high level of charging points at the moment?”
A council officer said it was not possible to determine who was a visitor and who was a resident out of the 15,800 unique driver accounts.
She also directed members back to the report which states that 52 EV charging points are to be installed in Newlands/Auldburn, 4 in Calton, 7 in Anderston/City/Yorkhill/ 4 in Hillhead, 20 in Drumchapel/Anniesland, 6 in East Centre, 14 in Shettleston, 8 in Dennistoun, 2 in Partick East/Kelvindale and 2 in Maryhill.
The officer said: “We have commissioned a report to look at electric vehicle demand going forward and a consultancy company was looking at that for us.
“Again I don’t think we will be able to get that level of detail from it but it will provide a lot more interesting information to allow us to put forward our strategy going forward.
“The breakdown of the 119 new EV points are in a table by ward and those sites have been determined. Some of them are in the process of being built. We will be using loads of tools to determine the location of future points.”
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