Pivot Power Brings Tesla & Fastned Together to Build Superhub in UK

Tesla and Fastned are building another large charging station together.

Pivot Power is a startup created to develop and operate grid-scale batteries and provide power infrastructure required for EV fast charging throughout the UK. It is like a private network operator, and it builds this infrastructure concentrated in hubs.

Pivot Power has over 40 sites in the planning process in the UK. At all of these sites, Pivot Power would like to have a superfast charging point operator (CPO), a slower AC CPO, and also provide renewable energy to large charging stations of fleet operators or on the private parking lots of large companies.

This first Superhub us in Oxford and is part of a larger project that is looking at different ways to transform the city of Oxford to CO2 neutrality by 2040. Other parts of the project are about installing heat pumps for houses and electrifying the taxi fleet in Oxford.

At the Oxford hub, they have a high-capacity 33kV connection to the National Grid, the UK’s electricity transportation network. At the hub, they install a 48MW/50MWh lithium-ion battery and a 2MW/5MWh vanadium flow battery. There will be three CPOs present — Fastned, Tesla, and Wenea. The hub also has a large park & ride area with a bus stop.

Fastned will provide 14 ultrafast chargers, up to 300kW for all EV drivers. Tesla will add 12 Superchargers for Tesla drivers. Wenea completes the Superhub with sixteen 7–22kW chargers for drivers who park for a few hours and would like to top up their batteries.

This type of company, focused on providing the infrastructure for large charging stations, acting as a middle man between the electric utility, the grid operator, and the charging network operators, can play an important role. It calls itself “capacity provider,” and by doing just that, it takes away the often long timeframe between finding a site and getting a grid connection for a CPO.

It is great if Pivot Power’s specialisation in this aspect of building the new infrastructure helps speed up the transition to fully electric driving.