AT&T – Electric Car Charging

28 January 2018

The Client

The American multinational telecommunications conglomerate AT&T, provides telecommunications and digital entertainment services across the globe. It constantly re-designs and upgrades the data centres it owns, with the latest technology as it seeks to improve efficiency and service reliability.

The Project

Back in 2016, AT & T undertook a review as part of initiative to reduce the carbon footprint of its business and to encourage a greater uptake of ultra-low emission vehicles (ULEV’s) within the company car fleet.

Following the review, the organisation’s key stake-holders, including Finance, HR, Works Council and Fleet leadership, offered their support and funding for the project. This allowed the business to install vehicle charging stations at the AT&T Headquarters in Redditch, with the aim of attracting employees living within 15-40 miles from the office to switch to plug-in electric vehicles.

The preferred supplier Charge Master, was then tasked to provide the supply, installation and commissioning of the car charging stations, with Holborn undertaking the associated electrical distribution and building work necessary in AT&T’s selected car parking area.

The standard car charging posts offer a number of options:

  • Power Supply – either 1 x 64-amp feed or 2 x 32-amp.
  • Each post facilitates dual charging
  • Four power options, 16-amp or 32-amp, single or three phase.
  • Charge point will communicate with vehicle and deliver appropriate charging.

The car charging posts come with three access options for the client to select which is the most appropriate for the needs of its workers and/or the public:

  • Entry level – key operated, with no monitoring facility. Posts require same key to start and stop a charge session. Whilst in operation, cable is locked to post. Keys can be unique to each post or can be ‘sweetened’ to be used across all posts.
  • RFID – Operated by use of contactless cards. Cards can be ordered and issued as necessary. Additional cards can be ordered @ £6.50 each. Back office facility (web enabled) allows AT&T to access data surrounding card usage, kwh usage and to download data and bill users. A 24/7 helpline is available to allow remote access to reset charge posts and cards.
  • Pay-as-you-go – Can be set as public use or private. Under private set-up, employee registers for a public card (6 months free followed by £7.85 per month subscription). They can use public charge points (80% are free electric, 20% @ 9 pence per kwh). Cards issued for the posts, usage cost collected by Charge Master from users and reimbursed to AT&T quarterly. 19p transaction fee per charge session.

Although the posts can be made available to the public, and their location advertised, given the secure nature of the AT&T facility, they chose option 2, making the cards only available to their people.

The Work

Work commenced in the Autumn of 2016, with Holborn excavating trenches by soft digging the edges of the existing car park borders. Into the trenches we lay 100mm ducting and draw strings, to the locations for the posts, including an electrical feeder pillar location, which is an electrical distribution board housed within a GRP weatherproof housing.

Holborn then installed a new main electrical cable feed, from AT&T’s High Voltage distribution board, to the car park feeder pillar. From this new external distribution board, multiple armoured electrical cable supplies, rated at 63A SP&N, were run in the pre-installed ducting to 6 charging points, including the associated earthing.

Once all this preparation work was completed, Chargemaster undertook the final mounting of the posts onto the concrete bases provided by Holborn. The final electrical connections were made before the units were successfully commissioned, with cards supplied in readiness for AT&T employees to use.

The Benefits

Since installation the charging points have proved very popular and AT& has reported growth in the number of electrical vehicles in its fleet, with queues at the chargers a regular sight.

If you are considering helping your employees make the switch to electric vehicles, speak to Holborn today and we’ll talk you through the benefits and the costs.