Swiss firm Zühlke is developing an app for the UK government to help potential investors find the best places to install vehicle charging infrastructure.

With the sale of new petrol cars banned by 2030, the UK needs investment in generation capacity and, particularly, distribution to meet the increased demand for electricity this will bring.

But with this nine-year clock ticking, essential investment is being held back through a lack of information and data. The app, to be developed by Zühlke, follows a government competition and award, and will start overcoming this by providing green investors with data, models and insights that it is hard for outsiders to the UK electricity sector to acquire.

Zühlke was one of nine winners for a government award to encourage such innovative digital energy data projects.

The app could save potential investors months of effort in finding data they can trust and decide the best locations to install charging infrastructure, with value added information such as demand at different times of day and in different seasons.

“The demand for electricity across the UK will quickly go through the roof through with the impending arrival of millions of electric cars, but the infrastructure is just not there to deal with their owners simultaneously charging-up at home and out-and-about around the country,” said Dan Klein, director for Zühlke in the UK. “2030 is only nine years away, which in infrastructure terms is just around the corner. Britain will not be ready and will endure rolling brownouts from the huge and dispersed demand from electric cars without the arrival of fresh outside investment, innovators and disrupters.”

The app, which will start with the Highlands of Scotland and move on to cover the rest of the UK in stages, is aimed at helping potential investors identify the specific location where investment is needed, whether for green generation, charging points, battery storage and other new infrastructure.

“Currently this information is hard for people outside the large power suppliers to acquire,” said Klein. “This app brings it all together and also models it, providing a thorough basis for initial analysis and subsequent detailed research by new entrants to the UK electricity market.”

The current grid was primarily set up to deliver electricity to industrial centres in the 1950s, not the widespread high demand expected when everyone arrives home at 6pm after work and plugs the car in.

For instance, the Hinckley nuclear power station in Somerset was created to supply electricity to the industrial areas of south Wales. To get the electricity from Hinkley to the nearby Somerset town of Yeovil to charge cars, it effectively goes via south Wales to Didcot near Oxford and then back to the West Country. That is a simplification, but it illustrates that clever minds have to come together to solve many big problems facing the UK’s electricity infrastructure.

When considering the increased power demands from the suburban car owners of such conurbations as London, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow, it is easy to see that without huge and well targeted investment, Britain in the 2030s could have regular brownouts from the demands of electricity-guzzling cars replacing petrol ones.

There are very many pinch-points around the UK where the demand for electricity from cars, combined with poor infrastructure, will soon cause the grid to fail, but so far, the only region to attempt to identify them is in northern Scotland.

For instance, it turns out the car park of Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness, a layby on the A82 with nice views and the Great Glen Distillery, has some of the highest potential to cause brownouts across Scotland through sightseers charging their cars while admiring the views.

The £149,000 was award to Zühlke to develop the first stage of its electric vehicle infrastructure investor app by the government body UKRI, as part of its£102.5m Prospering from the Energy Revolution programme, aims to accelerate innovation in smart local energy systems. This is matched by the project participants, creating a total investment of over £200m.

“The quality and range of concepts put forward in this initial competition not only shows what is possible by using some of the newest ideas in data and technology, but also highlights the variety of inefficiencies in the current energy landscape that can be improved as we move towards our net-zero ambitions in the UK,” said Rob Saunders, challenge director for the Prospering from the Energy Revolution challenge at UKRI. “Whether it’s industry, farming, investment or efficiency for people’s homes, there is a part to play for innovative technology that reduces usage for us all. We are now looking forward to helping these projects move to the next phase of bringing their solutions to life through testing and development of the ideas.”

The app is for commercial investors in electric vehicle energy infrastructure who need up-to-date understanding of current and planned initiatives and the energy system as it changes in accordance with achieving the UK’s net zero goals. The app is a collaborative, cloud-based, curated modelling environment with open-source aspects and free-to-use and additional paid premium information and features.

The aim is to cut through the complexity of acquiring the core knowledge that is inherently held by the technical leadership within distribution network operators of data sources, models, initiatives and recommended practice, rather than relying on individuals to undertake personal knowledge transfer with specialists across local and central government, energy companies, and academia.

The app provides curated access to core standards compliant data and models, with a facility to build run-time simulations of investment models as a foundation for investors to elaborate more sophisticated investment models and intellectual property.

Zühlke is a global innovation service provider, envisaging ideas and creating business models for clients from a wide range of industries by developing services and products based on new technologies, from the initial vision, through development to deployment, production and operation. Its venture capital arm provides start-up financing in the high-tech sector.

Zühlke was founded in Switzerland in 1968 and is owned by its partners. Its 1300 employees are based in Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Hong Kong, Portugal, Serbia, Singapore, Switzerland and the UK.