It’s UK Net Zero Week and we’re pleased to announce the completion of our £1m prototype project with National Highways, where we validated the role of our product in enabling rapid EV charging in high-use and remote locations.
We secured £1m as part of the National Highways and Innovate UK £20m ‘Innovation call’ to invest in projects that can help improve air quality and operation of England’s roads. We were one of 13 companies selected from over 200 entrants to demonstrate our IPG Flameless Generator technology as a solution for unlocking clean, off-grid power for rapid EV charging in remote and high-use location, such as the UK’s motorways.
Clean, off-grid EV charging
Beyond the cost of the vehicles, consumer range anxiety is the next biggest barrier to at-scale Electric Vehicle (EV) adoption, driven by reliable availability of EV charging infrastructure and lengthy charging times. To overcome this barrier, the UK’s Zero Emission Transport strategy includes the deployment of a rapid EV charging network (100-350 kW) in high-utilisation locations to supplement home and work-based charging. However, in many high-use areas and remote locations, upgrading grid connections to meet future charging demand is not practical or commercially viable.[1]
IPG, National Highways and Innovate UK came together on this £1 million SBRI project, with the support of Cranfield University, to address some of these infrastructure and investment challenges of decarbonising our transport network.
(Brett Moolenschot, Senior Product Manager for IPG demonstrates to the prototype to National Highways team)
“Integrating renewably-fuelled power generation into a suite of climate tech solutions can help to support the deployment and expansion of EV charging infrastructure on sites constrained by their remote locations or limited grid connections. The partnership with National Highways has been instrumental in defining where our technology will make the most impact,” said Toby Gill, CEO.
“Beyond the use-case of EV charging, this prototype project has successfully demonstrated that we have a product that can deliver the on-demand and secure power synonymous with a diesel generator but in a way that is compatible with the clean air and net zero ambitions of all industries,” said Gill.
The IPG Flameless Generator
The IPG Flameless Generator uses our breakthrough combustion technology to provide the benefits of fuel-based power without the harmful pollutants - the elimination of which is a key driver in the switch to electric vehicles. More crucially, the fuel-flexibility afforded by this combustion process offers a roadmap to de-risking the switch to renewable fuels, such as biogas and hydrogen, ensuring a long-term, net-zero solution.
The partnership with National Highways has been instrumental in defining where our technology will make the most impact
What’s next?
With all the lessons learnt from our prototype development during this project, we are currently raising investment through Seedrs crowdfunding platform to deploy the next iteration of our product in longer-term trials with our customers. We achieved our £1m funding target in just 10 days, and now we have entered overfunding to expand the scale and scope of our trial program. With 6 days left of our crowdfunding campaign, learn more about how to get involved here: https://bit.ly/InvestInIPG
Read the more on the National Highways website.
[1] UK Government (May 2020), Government vision for the rapid chargepoint network in England, available at: www.gov.uk
Capital at risk.
