City Councilor Duncan Kerr opened the first charging station as Mayor last year
City councils said they wanted to be ahead of the curve as more people move away from gasoline and diesel vehicles and demand for charging points is expected to increase significantly in the years to come.
It should be explored to bring more points into the city.
Data from InstaVolt, the provider of the two charging points in Central Car Park, was recently presented to members of the Oswestry City Council.
It showed that the number of charging processes, energy consumption in kilowatt hours (kWh) and CO2 savings have increased steadily since the chargers were switched on in October.
They were installed by InstaVolt for free and the company charges 35 pence per kWh of energy consumed. Motorists also have to pay for parking.
According to the report, the chargers were used less than 20 times in October, hitting around 70 in April, and rising to nearly 140 in May.
Councilor Paul Milner said, “It would be good to expand the number of car charging points we have.
“The market is only going to rise and rise now, so it would be nice to be ahead of the game.”
This was supported by other members, with Councilor Olly Rose suggesting that solar panels that the council is planning to install in Powis Hall could power additional chargers.
However, city clerk Arren Roberts told members that despite the surge in usage, InstaVolt had said that demand was not high enough to currently consider installing additional chargers in the city.
He said, “It was examined with InstaVolt. As I understand they don’t offer additional charging points in Oswestry so we would look for an alternative provider.
“It’s a significant investment and they don’t think there is more demand for chargers than we have.
“If you look at the numbers, there is capacity there.”
Councilor John Price suggested asking the case officer to further study the market outlook for electric vehicle use and produce another report at a future meeting to advise councilors whether to pursue the matter with another provider.
