YHN, which is responsible for managing council homes on behalf of Newcastle City Council, joins four residential clusters – each based around a shared substation – in the North East and brings the total participants in the region to 55, each of whom are leasing a Nissan LEAF.

Lois Warne, technical advisor at North East England-based project partner Zero Carbon Futures, explained: ‘The technology that is being trialled through the project will monitor and control the electricity demand from charging electric cars and, in the long-term, will save expensive and potentially disruptive work being carried out to upgrade the electricity network.’

YHN has 13 employees taking part in the 18-month trial, picked out a hat from 50 who registered to take part. The company has also installed six charging points at its office in Benton Park Road, which can be remotely deactivated for a short time during periods of peak demand, and will allow the project to get a picture of how business needs differ from its residential clusters.

David Henry, environmental sustainability co-ordinator at YHN, said: ‘There were lots of people keen to get involved with the trials so when we heard that there was an opportunity to form a business cluster, and test the impact of multiple vehicle charging from our own head office, it was the opportunity we’d been waiting for.’