Optimise Prime collects Collaborate to Innovate Award

The Optimise Prime project has been recognised at The Engineer’s seventh annual Collaborate to Innovate awards, collecting the winning prize in the Information, Data and Connectivity category.

The annual awards celebrate the very best in UK collaborations and innovations in engineering.

Optimise Prime, the world’s largest commercial electric vehicle project, joined winners from other UK-led engineering projects ranging from a real-word test bed for low carbon aviation technologies to a revolutionary device for diagnosing prostate cancer.

UK Power Networks' Florentine Roy and Muhammad Musa were joined by Hitachi’s Ben Kinrade and Colm Gallagher at the awards ceremony on Thursday, 23 February.

More information about the awards can be found on The Engineer’s website, together with a profile of the project.

Optimise Prime EV datasets updated

Optimise Prime has updated the project datasets, available on the UK Power Networks Open Data Portal, in order to make the project data easier to use for project stakeholders.

New transformed datasets take the form of summaries of the Optimise Prime data for the Home and Depot charging trials.

The home charging data now includes a summary of all trips made, while the depot charging data includes summarised load profiles, summaries of the EVs and charge points at each depot and details of flexibility events.

To download and view the datasets visit the Open Data Portal.

Structure of the Optimise Prime datasets available on the Open Data Portal

Optimise Prime shares final learnings

The Optimise Prime network innovation project has today published its final deliverable, detailing the lessons learnt from four years of trial activity.

The project has gathered data from over 8,000 electric vehicles (EVs) driven for commercial purposes through three trials and implemented a range of technical and commercial solutions with the aim of accelerating the transition to EVs for commercial fleet operators, while helping GB’s distribution network operators (DNOs) plan and prepare for the mass adoption of EVs.

This report provides a comprehensive overview of lessons learnt from conducting the trials, throughout which the project has collected and analysed data from a wide range of sources in order to carry out a wide range of experiments and developed recommendations for future use of the project methods and data in order to reduce the impact of commercial EV growth on distribution networks.

Three trials have involved studying British Gas’s Home Based Fleet, Royal Mail’s depot based fleet and Uber private hire vehicles.

The key findings, which are discussed in more detail throughout the report, include:

Return-to-Home Trials

  • Unmanaged, home-based fleets will create concentrated load peaks from 17.00 on weekdays due to the timing of the end of shifts coinciding with network peaks

  • Smart charging can be very effective at changing load patterns, however it may lead to significant ‘secondary peaks’ overnight.  Incentives to drive the smart charging behaviour should be considered to reduce the impact of this behavioural change on the network

  • The British Gas home-based fleet was found to be very reliable in the delivery of weekday flexibility services, over a one hour period at specific times, due to its predictable pattern of charging load. Revenue from flexibility, which could amount to around £215 per vehicle per year, can help to improve the total cost of ownership (TCO) for home-based fleets

  • Winter EV energy requirements are approximately 30% higher than in the summer

  • The proportion of the home-based fleet that relies on public infrastructure has increased throughout the trial. This is because drivers that could charge at home were initially targeted, before moving on to those who needed to use public infrastructure. British Gas estimate that up to 60% of their fleet may need to use public infrastructure once fleet electrification is complete.

Royal Mail EVs charging in a depot

Depot Trials

  • Load profiles are depot specific and can change seasonally, with two main peaks appearing at 14:00 and 19:00, which follow the depot delivery schedules. More rural Royal Mail depots are likely to see their demand peak in the afternoon

  • The short and sharp load peaks at some depots limit the duration (up to three hours) and volume of flexibility (up to 25% of the depot’s charging capacity) that can be offered. Flexibility products should incentivise participation from fleets that can offer flexibility very reliably and fleets that are less reliable, as well as different volumes of flexibility, to maximise access to controllable load at the best possible price

  • Factors impacting reliability of flexibility services include:

    • the size of the depot – minor changes at small depots can have a large impact on delivery of flexibility

    • the charge point to EV ratio – sharing charge points results in higher utilisation, but timing of charge events can be challenging to predict

    • daily EV mileages – impacting how long flexibility events can be sustained

    • operational processes – such as when EVs are plugged in, the variability of shift patterns and the use of vehicles on different shifts

  • Using smart charging to manage load in line with a profiled connection was shown to save some depots up to £95,000 on the cost of connection and up to 12 weeks in the time to connect. While the changes to connection charges announced in the Access and Forward Looking Charges Significant Code Review will lead to customers no longer having to pay for reinforcement of shared assets, these costs were made on extension assets that would still be the responsibility of the customer after the change

  • Trials suggest that between seven and 20% of fleet charging costs could be covered by revenue from flexibility services. However, whether this can be achieved depends on the DNO’s requirements for flexibility services, the electricity tariff and how this aligns with the depot’s charging schedule

  • Profiled connections can be successfully implemented, but EV load must be the dominant load in the depot for its control to reliably ensure compliance.

Mixed Trials

  • Most (77%) demand from PHVs occurred off-shift, with plug-ins peaking at about 20:00, but continuing through the night – later than other fleets would normally plug in

  • Future demand from PHVs is likely to shift further towards off-shift charging close to home, as vehicles with larger batteries are able to complete full shifts on one charge, further reducing the proportion of on-shift charging

  • It is expected that the rapid growth in the number of Uber EVs will result in a maximum load from off-shift charging in Greater London increasing from an estimated 10 MW in May 2022 to 69 MW by the end of 2025. Over the same period, annual electricity demand from these EVs is expected to reach 497 GWh, compared to 63 GWh used in the year to May 2022. Based on modelling of driver shift times, charging needs and home locations, Optimise Prime estimates that approximately 33,500 fast charge points may be required to service this demand if drivers opt for overnight fast charging.

The trials piloted two methods aimed at reducing the impact of EV charging on the distribution network, provision of flexibility services and profiled connections. Optimise Prime has developed several recommendations for DNOs regarding the implementation of the methods trialled in the project, including:

Flexibility Services

  • The month (or more) ahead product should allow fleets to re-forecast their baseline in the run up to delivery to improve predictability/reliability of outcome

  • Pricing incentives should be structured to reward good performance without disincentivising participation by some fleets. A range of products with different performance/reliability thresholds could be implemented to achieve this, with fleets with a higher probability of successful delivery attracting a higher price

  • Automation is required in the tender, bidding, dispatch and settlement calculation processes to make provision by smaller assets cost effective

  • Baselining establishes a ‘normal’ level of load against which the delivery of flexibility is judged and rewarded. As EV demand fluctuates, establishing an accurate baseline can be difficult. Tests of several baselining methodologies highlighted the need to use recent data and demonstrated that the most accurate method varied and needs to be chosen based on fleet characteristics.

  • Incentives should be structured to prevent the occurrence of secondary peaks which could cause additional problems for the network.

Profiled Connections

  • A process to model the expected load flow (such as using UK Power Networks’ LV utilisation modelled data), as a proxy for the substation data may be required if no monitoring is available, supplemented with half-hourly data and/or diversity modelling

  • Planning systems need to have the capability to assess network loading at a half-hourly granularity, in order to assess the feasibility and benefit of a profiled connection

  • The range of contracts should allow for dynamic profiled connections, that can be changed or activated at the request of DNOs to act as flexibility products

  • A process to revise profiled connections is needed to allow changes in fleet operations during the life of the connection. A review is likely to be required approximately one month after implementation to ensure the EV load is in line with the forecast. Seasonal updates may also be required, in addition to ad hoc reviews in response to significant changes in fleet or depot operations.

  • Integrated monitoring is required to provide the DNO with visibility of breaches, a method of communicating alerts to the provider is also required

  • A method to police the profile, either through physical disconnection, economic penalties, or a combination of the two, must be agreed in the contract and implemented.

The report also contains a number of appendices, providing a deeper insight into topics of interest to DNOs and fleets, including the project’s behavioural research, total cost of ownership analysis and practical learnings from implementing EV infrastructure.


Optimise Prime is an industry-led EV innovation and demonstration project that brings together partners from leading technology, energy, transport and financing organisations, including Hitachi Vantara, UK Power Networks, Centrica, Royal Mail, Uber, Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks, Hitachi Europe and Novuna Vehicle Solutions. Through cross-industry collaboration and co-creation, the project has been aiming to reduce the impact of EVs on distribution networks and ensure security of electricity supply, while saving money for electricity customers, helping the UK meet its ‘clean air’ and climate change objectives.

World’s biggest commercial EV trial accelerates move to all-electric fleets

The trials for Optimise Prime, the world’s biggest trial of commercial electric vehicles (EVs) have come to an end, and demonstrated how barriers, such as cost and energy demand, can be overcome through digitisation and new product offerings. The outcomes of this landmark study follow a year-long trial, and could help unlock the mass rollout of EV fleets across UK and beyond. 

Read more

Behavioural and Economic Findings from Optimise Prime: New Report

Optimise Prime has today published its latest deliverable, focusing on interim learnings from business modelling work. The report, the fifth of seven that will be published throughout the project includes a guide for fleet electrification based on the project’s experiences, the results of economic analysis of fleet electrification and of behavioural analysis based on over 2,500 survey results from drivers. The deliverable also presents outcomes from profiled connection trials, learnings from the charging of commercial EVs at domestic premises and findings regarding current EV flexibility markets.

The Optimise Prime trials, which have been running since 1st July 2021, consist of three key use cases:

  • Return-to-Home charging, with Centrica’s British Gas fleet;

  • Depot charging, with Royal Mail’s delivery vehicles; and

  • Mixed charging (where EVs charge at a variety of locations) based on analysis of journey data from Uber’s electric private hire vehicles (PHVs) in London)

Across these trials we’ve been collecting journey and charging data from thousands of commercial EVs across the UK in order to build up a clear picture of the potential impact of EV growth on distribution networks. The project is also trialling the effectiveness of new connection and flexibility services that could reduce the need for network reinforcement as a result of the EV transition. The first results of this was shared in our previous deliverable, D4.

Alongside the trial activity the Optimise Prime team is looking at other non-technical aspects of the EV transition, which may impact the speed of EV adoption or the decisions taken by fleet managers. These economic and behavioural issues are the focus of this fifth deliverable. This report should prove valuable to any fleet considering the transition to EVs, highlighting the key steps in the electrification journey and the financial, operational and behavioural aspects that need to be considered for a successful fleet rollout. Behavioural acceptance is key in ensuring that the complex process of change involved in fleet electrification runs smoothly – the large sample of views from drivers in businesses making an early adoption to EVs should provide reassurance in the positive reactions, while highlighting specific areas which cause problems for drivers.

Some of the key lessons for fleets in the report include:

  • There are a wide range of factors that fleet managers need to consider when transitioning to EVs. Careful planning is essential and must consider business needs, site constraints (both physical and electrical) and the management of changes to business processes. A comprehensive guide based on the experiences of the Optimise Prime partners can be found in Section 2 of the report

  • At present, whether total cost of ownership (TCO) favours EV or ICEV fleets varies considerably. EV prices are the key determinant of whether EVs make purely economic sense for a fleet, but there are many other factors influencing the cost. The economic cost also needs to be weighed against the clear environmental benefits of EV adoption

  • After drivers have tried EVs, they feel more positively about the technology and overall drivers have very positive views towards EV adoption

  • Charging facilities play a key role in giving drivers the confidence that they can fulfil their daily work tasks and lack of charging facilities can be a particular concern for drivers

  • Drivers who are not happy with their EV generally have broad concerns over a range of technical, organisational, economic, and environmental aspects – there is not a single area that needs to be improved to get them on board

  • Automating the reimbursement of charge-at-home electricity is necessary for larger fleets and gaining the trust of drivers through clear communication is necessary for the successful implementation of reimbursement solutions

For distribution network operators and regulators this report provides, in addition to the lessons about EV adoption, important learnings about the applicability of flexibility and profiled connections that will be useful in defining plans for the use of time-profiled access rights to improve the efficient use of networks:

  • While connection costs are not the major driver of electrification costs, they can contribute to making or breaking an investment case which is sometimes finely balanced

  • Centrica found that installation of home charging slowed their rollout and sometimes required drivers to use public charging as an alternative. This was generally as a result of domestic properties that were already over capacity due to electric heating, or were on looped supplies

  • Charging facilities play a key role in giving drivers the confidence that they can fulfil their daily work tasks – enabling adequate charging infrastructure is crucial to the successful transition to EVs

  • Adequate EV load, in proportion to background load, is needed for a successful profiled connection. Controllable EV load needs to be greater than the variation in building load, so whether a site is suitable needs to be considered

  • Determining an accurate profile is key to being able to adhere to the profile. Profiled connections may need to be refined as more data becomes available. DNOs may need to be flexible to review changes in requirements over time and will have to put in place contractual, operational and technical measures to manage risk

  • Thanks to regular shift patterns during weekdays, plug-in rates could be accurately predicted with an estimated 95% accuracy during the home trials. This should allow provision of reliable flexibility services. Weekends and holidays remain more challenging to predict due to irregular shift patterns. A 250-300 vehicle fleet should be able to deliver this level of accuracy.

  • With regard to billing of commercial EV charging at home there are limitations in what can be achieved through a commercial solution at present, because the driver first has to pay the bill and then be reimbursed and companies can’t easily benefit from ToU tariffs. This may benefit from an industry solution

  • High complexity and the level of automation required to bring down transactional cost make it likely that fleets will participate in the flexibility markets via intermediaries such as aggregators or Charge Point Operators

The trials are due to conclude at the end of June and the next Optimise Prime deliverable, scheduled to be released in the Autumn of 2022, will be a dataset gathered during the Optimise Prime trials which other organisations will be able to use to help plan their response to the EV transition. This will be followed by the final project learnings later in the year. All of the Optimise Prime deliverables can be found on the project website.

Part-funded by Ofgem’s Network Innovation Competition, Optimise Prime is an industry-led electric vehicle innovation and demonstration project that brings together partners from leading technology, energy, transport and financing organisations, including Hitachi Vantara, UK Power Networks, Centrica, Royal Mail, Uber, Scottish & Southern Electricity Networks, Hitachi Europe and Novuna.

Early Learning from the Optimise Prime Trials

Optimise Prime has today published its latest deliverable, focusing on the lessons learnt over the first months of the project’s trials.

The report , the fourth of seven that will be published throughout the project, sets out how each of the project’s three trials is performing, details the data gathered so far and provides a comprehensive overview of the insights the project has produced over the first few months of the Optimise Prime trials.

The Optimise Prime trials began on 1st July 2021, since then we’ve been collecting journey and charging data from thousands of commercial EVs across the UK in order to build up a clear picture of the potential impact of EV growth on distribution networks. Alongside this, the project is trialling the effectiveness of new connection and flexibility services that could reduce the need for network reinforcement as a result of the EV transition - the first results of which are detailed in this report.

The report’s learnings cover the project’s three trial workstreams - Return-to-Home charging, based on Centrica’s British Gas fleet; Depot charging, based on Royal Mail’s delivery vehicles; and Mixed charging (where EVs charge at a variety of locations) based on analysis of journey data from Uber’s electric private hire vehicles (PHVs) in London.

Key learnings, which are expanded on within the report, include:

In the Return-to-Home trials we’ve found that unmanaged, the peak charging demand from return-to-home vehicles is likely to occur between 17:00 and 19:00, coinciding with peak demand on the distribution network. However, smart charging has been modelled to reduce significantly peak demand from return-to-home vehicles as long as the load is balanced over a longer period and not just shifted to later in the day. Based on analysis of historical data we expect there to be a significant seasonal variation in power demand from home charged vehicles and will be monitoring this throughout the trials.

The Depot trials have modelled various smart charging scenarios, demonstrating that smart charging should deliver a reduction of peak demand for the networks as well as energy and connection cost savings for the depot operator. Initial trials and modelling of profiled connections have shown that it should be possible to utilise control of EV charging to keep sites within an agreed profile. However there may be some sites where there is too little controllable EV demand to do this reliably.
Flexibility trials have shown an ability to control charging in response to flexibility requests from our Distribution Network Operator (DNO) partners UK Power Networks and SSEN. In month ahead products there was a significant difference between forecast and actual demand , and so future trials will look at improving the reliability of forecasting.

In the Mixed Trials the data from Uber trips has allowed us to model charging events and demand throughout Greater London. Charge demand from PHVs is likely to peak in the evening as some drivers return home and others need to top up and there is a clear pattern within and across days in trip type and charging demand. We’ve identified a significant number of locations in Greater London where drivers need to travel far (eg. over 2 miles) if they need to charge during their shift due to limited availability of rapid chargers - and in the most popular locations demand is outstripping charge point capacity resulting in use of non-optimal chargers (i.e. those further away from the demand). Throughout the project there has been continual growth in both charge point infrastructure and the average range of vehicles in the WS3 trial. Both of these factors will need to be factored in to modelling of future charging patterns as we consider how future growth will impact on distribution networks.

The next Optimise Prime deliverable, due to be released later in Spring 2022 will focus on findings related to business models, including economic and behavioural findings from total cost of ownership analysis and driver surveys.

The trials are due to conclude at the end of June - this will be followed by the release of a project data set and final project learnings later in the year. All of the Optimise Prime deliverables can be found on the project website.

Part-funded by Ofgem’s Network Innovation Competition, Optimise Prime is an industry-led electric vehicle innovation and demonstration project that brings together partners from leading technology, energy, transport and financing organisations, including Hitachi Vantara, UK Power Networks, Centrica, Royal Mail, Uber, Scottish & Southern Electricity Networks, Hitachi Europe and Hitachi Capital.

Optimise Prime Trials Begin

The Optimise Prime formal trial period began on Thursday, 1st July 2021. This marks the point when the minimum number of vehicles required are on the road and the systems needed to capture data from vehicles and infrastructure are all in place. Trials will continue over the next year.

Read more

Solution Build Report - Lessons Learned : Optimise Prime publishes second deliverable

The Optimise Prime project has today released deliverable D2 - Solutions Build Report - Lessons Learned.

This report, the second of seven that will be published throughout the project, provides a comprehensive overview of of the solution build work carried out to date, and highlights a number of lessons that may be of use to organisations involved in the electrification of commercial fleets. Key learning points are highlighted throughout.

The document also revisits the methodology of Optimise Prime’s three trials, home, depot and mixed, detailing the activities that will take place as part of the project’s experiments and gives an update on trial preparations.

The next Optimise Prime deliverable, due to be released in mid-2021 will provide further learnings from the installation and testing phase of the project.

Part-funded by Ofgem’s Network Innovation Competition, Optimise Prime is an industry-led electric vehicle innovation and demonstration project that brings together partners from leading technology, energy, transport and financing organisations, including Hitachi Vantara, UK Power Networks, Centrica, Royal Mail, Uber, Scottish & Southern Electricity Networks, Hitachi Europe and Hitachi Capital.

Deliverable D2

Deliverable D2

Changing Lanes Webinar

On 23 April 2020 UK Power Networks hosted the Changing Lanes Webinar on future of commercial and domestic electric vehicles, bringing together Optimise Prime with SP Energy Networks’ project Charge. The webinar shared industry-leading technical insights from these flagship EV trials taking place across the UK.

If you missed the webinar you can replay the session below. The webinar features:
- UK Power Networks' Innovation lead Dr Sung Pil Oe,
- UK Power Networks' Innovation Engineer Florentine Roy,
- Hugo Seymour, Senior Manager at Hitachi Europe
Introducing Optimise Prime, the world's largest commercial electric vehicle trial delivered in conjunction with household names Hitachi, British Gas, Royal Mail and Uber. They detail progress made in designing ‘profiled connections’ to optimise use of the power network allowing more depots to transition to electric.

You'll also hear from Geoff Murphy, Lead Engineer at SP Energy Networks on Charge, an £8.5m project to accelerate the connection of EV Charging Infrastructure through developing new transport planning, connection and charging solutions.

Download the presentation here.

Optimise Prime publishes first project deliverable

The Optimise Prime project has today released deliverable D1 - High Level Design and Specification of the Three Trials.

This report, the first of seven that will be published throughout the project, provides a comprehensive overview of the trials methodology and the design of the three project trials - Home, Depot and Mixed Charging. The deliverable also gives a high-level technical specification of the solutions that will be implemented to support the trials and reports on the progress the Optimise Prime team has made in preparing for trial execution.

The document should prove valuable to any distribution network operator considering how to plan for the future growth of commercial electric vehicles as well as to vehicle fleets planning a transition to ultra-low carbon vehicles.

The next Optimise Prime deliverable will provide an insight into the learnings from the project’s infrastructure and technology build.

Part-funded by Ofgem’s Network Innovation Competition, Optimise Prime is an industry-led electric vehicle innovation and demonstration project that brings together partners from leading technology, energy, transport and financing organisations, including Hitachi Vantara, UK Power Networks, Centrica, Royal Mail, Uber, Scottish & Southern Electricity Networks, Hitachi Europe and Hitachi Capital.