Mer, a European EV charging company owned by Norwegian renewable energy supplier Statkraft, has been entrusted with the installation of charge points for the Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust.
Mer has installed charge points across 13 of the Trust's sites, alongside NTW Solutions Ltd, the subsidiary responsible for support services to the Trust.
NTW Solutions provides the Trust with estates and facilities management, car leasing, finance, workforce and procurement services.
NTW Solutions runs a fleet of 1,400 lease cars for Trust employees as well as around 90 service vehicles ranging from pool cars to vans and trucks.
“Working with Mer to procure these chargers has been an enabler for us to move forward with our decarbonisation strategy,” said Lee Cant, Commercial Director of NTW Solutions.
“We benchmark ourselves against other trusts in the region and we know that we are out in front in terms of fleet electrification thanks in part to this project.
“In total 40 percent of the lease cars are now fully electric or plug-in hybrids, while about a quarter of the service fleet is the same.
“We had a lot of wards that were not prepared to go electric until there were chargers on site.
“For example, we have a 24/7 crisis service that operates around the clock so needs constant access to the vehicles.
“It has enabled us to change our policy so that all new vehicles added to the fleet have to be electric unless there is a very good operational reason why they can’t be EVs.”
One of the main priorities for the Trust was the ability to set different tariffs – free charging for fleet vehicles, and pricing available for visitors and staff use.
Mer charge points are Zap-Pay enabled, meaning no extra apps or RFID cards are required to pay for your charging sessions.
“We are proud to be helping the Trust with the decarbonisation of its fleet,” said Scott Duncan, associate consultant at Mer.
“This was a complex but rewarding project to install chargers across multiple locations.
“The Trust is making full use of the smart charger technology to set different tariffs for various use cases and utilise Mer’s proprietary back-office software for data analytics.”
