Comserv are committed to reducing our carbon footprint and have been investing in an increasing number of Electric Vehicles (EV’s) that are suitable to our business needs.

We now have three EV delivery vehicles and five EV cars (four full EV and one plug-in hybrid which are manager vehicles) in our fleet that are fully Electric with four further full EV Supervisor vehicles due to in the first quarter of 2023.

Training Staff in Domestic, Commercial and Industrial Electric Charging Equipment Installations

As a result we needed to invest in Electric Vehicle charge points in our car park, so in May 2022 we applied to become an approved OZEV (Office for Zero Emission Vehicles) installer for domestic, commercial and residential chargers. In order to achieve this we trained three members of our Electrical Team to City & Guilds Level 3 in Domestic, Commercial and Industrial Electric Charging Equipment Installations 600/7756/6.  As a result, Comserv have also become an approved installer of ICS (Intelligent Charging Systems), an OZEV approved provider of EV equipment.

Comserv's Electrical Team working on the electric box for the EV's

Redesign of Car Park

As part of Comserv’s environmental strategy, we redesigned our main front car park to accommodate ten Electric Vehicle charging bays. James Dixon Wright our Qualifying Supervisor who undertook the training and the Electrical Manager Stephen Byatt collaborated on the design and the type of chargers we would look to install. The installation was designed to have 10 charging bays in order to support our long term objectives, with an initial six 7kW (30 amp single phase) charging sockets installed. We also put in place the infrastructure to connect to the remaining four chargers as demand dictates.

As part of the design we had to notify our Distribution Network Operator (DNO) of our plan and seek approval for the installation. This was granted by SSEN Connections & Engineering in August following a site visit, as the EV installation was designed with a load-limiting device ensuring our maximum demand did not exceed the capacity of the existing installation.

We ensured we future-proofed the cabling infrastructure to enable us to connect faster three phase chargers. A number of reviews were carried out to determine the average use and miles travelled by the staff and/or teams receiving an electric vehicle. We determined that the six single phase 7 KW chargers would provide an average of 25 miles of charge per socket per hour, so within the working day we could provide 1200 miles of range or 6000 miles in a week to a number of EV’s, along with another 2400 miles of range per night when we charged our three delivery EV’s overnight.

Left - The car park before redesign began. Right - Allocation and repainting of parking spaces for EV's

Experience for Apprentices

Part of the installation involved improvement work to our main switch room, so this enabled several of our Electrical Apprentices to gain some much needed experience of three phase commercial installations. This has supported their development and widened their electrical knowledge.

Comserv are proud that we have now been accredited as an approved company to install EV equipment adding another capability to the services we offer.

Some of our Electric Vehicles on charge

Background CO2 Information for Electric Vehicles

According to a report from www.transportenvironment.org, Electric Vehicles are ‘almost three times greener’ than petrol or diesel cars – even taking into account the mining and refining of materials for the batteries and the electricity used to charge them. In worst-case scenarios, EV’s emit 22% less CO2 than diesel and 28% less than petrol. However, the best-case scenarios state that EV’s emit 80% less CO2 than diesel and 81% less than petrol. The RAC states that improved energy production techniques and more advanced battery technology will result in less reliance on Crude Raw Materials. This means that electric cars will get greener as the means to produce and power them start to leave less of an environmental impact.