Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between John Hayes and Scott Mann

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 31st October 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Scott Mann]

Q I have one small supplementary question, if I may. Do you see yourselves as being an end-to-end provider or do you see other companies coming in to fill that middle gap?

Marcus Stewart: From a national grid point of view, my role is to balance the network and ensure that the energy is balanced. We have a transmission owner part that would own the high voltage network, and certainly the element up to a connection. Anything beyond the connection is available for third party competition. Any service provider could put that in. A deregulated version of the National Grid or another third party could put that in. Our primary role is the reinforcement element upstream to support that.

[Mr Hayes]

Q On the back of that, between you there is immense expertise in managing complex systems—I have read your CVs. On the issue of grid management, earlier today we heard a call for some kind of co-ordinated approach on where charge points were located to ensure their spread, and to ensure that there were no areas that would become black holes where there were not enough charging points. Presumably, any such co-ordinated plan would need to be married to the supply of electricity via the grid. The Bill does not yet do this. It is a first step down this road, and it simply increases the number of charging points. Do you see the sense of putting together a co-ordinated national strategy that ties together the provision of the charging points with the provision of the power?

Marcus Stewart: I think it would have some merits. I am not sure whether it needs to be mandated or not.