EDF buying PodPoint ?

[NorfolkMustard]

Will that'll be an end to free 7kW charging? or is the cost of that borne by the land owner currently (i.e. tesco car parks, local council car parks)

 

[MrBadger]

Oh.

Think some of the free charge points are sponsored, like by VW.

 

[arg]

Will that'll be an end to free 7kW charging? or is the cost of that borne by the land owner currently (i.e. tesco car parks, local council car parks)

The tariff is certainly set by the site owner, and although I have no knowledge of the actual contracts it seems extremely likely that the site owner is paying for the electricity (in all cases - they then set the tariff to make the money back if they want to).

Nearly all the PodPoint sites appear to have been installed by way of a 'customer/visitor perk' by the site owner. The recent Tesco/VW ones are more interesting as they appear to be intending to actually make money out of it: by putting in multiple rapids and charging a commercial tariff on them, plus slow chargepoints at no user cost but sponsored by VW/advertising.

(note that you need multiple rapids to have any hope of making money out of them, since a single unit can only support such a low level of demand that no plausible tariff could ever pay back the installation cost. Two units can serve much more than twice the demand, four units even better).