Getting a university campus ready for electric vehicles (EVs) involves a number of challenges to overcome. Zo Hoida, partner specialising in regeneration projects at UK and Ireland law firm Browne Jacobson, gives an overview of the legal nuts and bolts of installing and maintaining the necessary charging infrastructure.
Electric vehicles are increasing in numbers and the availability of charge points needs to improve. There are en route charging stations, charge points installed at people’s homes and, increasingly, charge points at places of work and other destination parking spots.
Car parks at university campuses also need them, but decision-makers often feel somewhat in the dark as to how to go about getting the systems installed and maintained.
Options for EV installation and maintenance
- Aggregated structures
An aggregated structure involves the university landowner appointing one contractor to do everything: acquiring the charge points, installing them, operating them, maintaining them and dealing with the billing.
- Disaggregated structures
Disaggregated structures involve multiple different contractors. This can lead to greater competition between contractors and potentially more attractive pricing. However, you will need to consider the risks in choosing this option. For example, if there is a problem with the charging kit and the operator can’t use the charging point to generate revenue, then who is responsible for this?
- Directive approach
This is the best approach if you already know exactly what you want: how many charge points you need, the technology you want to use, the charging speed and the pricing. All you need is one person to set it all up for you.
- Concession agreements
A concession agreement can be used to grant an operator or multiple operators rights to use your land to develop, construct and operate the EV charging infrastructure. In return, the university landowner charges a fee for the space used or takes a rebate based on revenue profits.
Electricity supply
As a landowner, university managers should consider whether the charge point operator will take their own power supply directly from the distribution network operator (DNO) or whether they will be relying on the university’s electricity supply.
The distribution grid infrastructure will need to be able to adequately support the increased load. This will depend on factors such as the type of charge point (i.e. slow or rapid), the existing connection capacity at the site and DNO consent. It is worth considering whether to build in excess capacity to prevent future shortage issues, considering that the UK is on track for EVs to account for around half of all road transport by 2035.
Landlord and tenant issues
- If any of the university’s land is held on a leasehold rather than freehold tenure, then the landlord’s consent for installation is likely to be required. Furthermore, the DNOs will require the freeholder to be a party to any easements required to bring in power infrastructure.
- If car parks or land to be developed for charging (whether held freehold or leasehold) are already subject to leases, licences or indeed other third-party rights and interests, then those tenants and rights-holders will need to be consulted, as well as consent and/or join into the legal documents.
- DNOs and charge point operators may be granted a lease of space for their equipment – heads of terms will need to be clear on issues such as ownership of equipment at the end of the term, responsibility for repair and upkeep of spaces, as well as equipment, insurance, rights to ‘lift and shift’, sub-letting and exclusivity.
Who is responsible for regulatory compliance?
Whichever structure you choose for your installation project, there will need to be sufficient due diligence on the land to ensure the development can happen safely and practically. Fire safety risk, underground hazards and other ground conditions will need to be considered to ensure the proposed area is suitable.
It is important to consider early on who will be responsible during construction for any issues between the landowner, the charge point operator and any other third parties or contractors. There may be risks around the assembling of cables, connecting into sub-stations and installing infrastructure. If something goes wrong, who will be to blame? You should ensure you have protective cover by way of insurance.
Once built, the ‘infrastructure operator’ responsible for operating the charge point (whether the owner or a person operating it on behalf of someone else) is the person responsible for compliance under the Alternative Fuel Infrastructure Regulations 2017.
Note that according to these regulations, car parks for consumers of goods and services – such as retail car parks – count as ‘public’, unlike collective residential car parks and workplace car parks. This is important because ‘public’ charge point operators must provide a ‘pay-as-you-go’ option to ensure all charge points accessible to the public are usable without a pre-existing contract, including annual subscriptions.
So, depending on where a campus is situated and the current parking strategy, this could be another aspect the university needs to consider.
Challenges of installing EV charging on campus
In addition to finding suitable areas with the appropriate ground conditions for electric infrastructure to be installed and the availability of power, there are additional challenges around shortages of skills.
The UK currently does not have enough skilled people either for the installation or ongoing maintenance of charging infrastructure.
This is a relatively new technology, and we don’t have the required numbers of trained electricians (for high voltage in particular) and other specialists who can work on charge point infrastructure.
This is something the university sector is well-placed to aid in developing solutions but, in the short and medium terms, estates managers may still find frustrations in taking forward bold plans for sustainably developing their estates to include provision for EV charging.
All over the country and in many different sectors, organisations are starting to think about and ramp up their EV provision. In case it becomes a race, it is important to be at the start line now.
Collaboration
Don’t forget that your campus is not an island. Consider whether there are other landowners or stakeholders who may be interested in partnering with you on an EV charge point project.
For example, the University of Worcester has installed 100 charge points into a car park that also provides 200 other community parking spaces, and so has been able to benefit from local enterprise partnership investment.
Keele University has partnered with Siemens on its ‘living laboratory’ campus and now has 38 charge points that are free to use for both staff and students, and Loughborough University developed a number of its charge points with a tech industry tenant at Loughborough University Science & Enterprise Park.