The Ten-T Project has now concluded. In 2012 the ESB Ecars and DRD Northern Ireland succeeded in getting funding from EU Commission and the TEN-T Agency to install chargers for electric vehicles both north and south. This project was a fantastic success. ” International Green Electric Highways” Completion Event presented by ESB Ireland was held in Brussels 23rd September 2014. This event was attended by over 40 invited guests from various countries and organisations. A member of the Irish EV Owners committee attended on the invite of ESB Ecars.
Irene Breen NI Ecars welcomed all and introduced the various speakers. The TEN-T INEA welcomed all to the event. On the political side Minister Danny Kennedy, MLA Northern Ireland and Deirdre Clune, MEP Ireland South addressed the meeting. Gareth Davis, Manager of ESB Ecars welcomed all and gave special mention to the member of the Irish EV Owners Group being present. Paddy Carroll, Iriah EV Owners committee, represented the organization at the event. His welcome was followed by Deirdre Arthur, Commercial Manager ESB Ecars, who gave a detailed summary, conclusion and recommendations from both ROI and NI TEN-T Project. This presentation gave all present a huge amount of useful information on how such a project was organized, delivered and concluded.
Joe Mooney, ESB Ecars showed the technical results and lessons learned during the two years rollout. This was followed by a demonstration of the Charge Point Management System by Danny Clinton, ESB Ecars. His presentation used data from one of the Irish EV Owners Group – this system is fully interoperable and cross border usage.
Oliver Paturet, Nissan gave a presentation on the forth coming RCN Project — ESB Ecars are part of a consortium to deploy additional fast/rapid charge points in Ireland and Britain – 2 in Northern Ireland and 4 in the south. Once completed, the UK Rapid Charge Network (RCN) will comprise of more than 70 multi-standard rapid chargers covering some 1,100km of major trunk routes. Helmut Morsi Deputy Head of DG Move showed all the funding opportunities available for innovation projects from the commission. The event was rounded off with a question and answer session.
Points of interest taken from the meeting by the attendee from the Irish EV Owners Group on the completion of the project:
A sincere thanks to ESB Ecars for inviting a rep from the Irish EV Owners Group committee to be part of the event. By our attendance it shows that they are committed to having the “end user” (EV Driver) as an most important stakeholder in all of this. It also gave us an exposure to the 40 or so attendees – it put our Group on the stage in EU Commission.
The committee would like to thank ESB Ecars most sincerely for their work, dedication and professionalism in rolling out the TEN-T network of chargers around the island. We all hope for a follow up to the successful TEN-T.
