Public procurement notice: Prior Information Notice Without Call For Competition
Published: 2019-04-08
Buyer: Leicester City Council
Country: UK
Contract type: Supplies
CPV classification: 48000000

Technical requirements: This prior information notice is to advise the market of a forthcoming procurement opportunity and suppliers do not need to express an interest at this time. A further Contract Notice will be issued as a call for competition; this is expected to be published in May 2019.
Leicester City Council “the Council” are undertaking a “Vehicle to Building” (V2B) project at their headquarters, City Hall. Leicester is part of a six centre, EU (Interreg) programme of pilot projects, (smart, clean energy and electric vehicles for the City — SEEV4-City), studying how to optimise the use of electrical vehicles, renewable energy resources and smart ICT, in various urban settings; to maximise the amount of renewable energy available to charge electric vehicles.
This is a small pilot project. However, the Council is aware that with the growth in decentralised energy generation, the V2B concept has the potential to be upscaled and implemented in a range of urban settings.
1) Maximise electric vehicle’s (EV’s) use of renewable energy; by prioritising PV generation for: a.) EVs; b.) City Hall;
3) Avoid grid investments; by EVs discharging to City Hall during evening peak and scheduling main EV recharge for overnight.
The workings of this “behind the meter” project should save money by reducing City Hall’s electrical demand at peak times.
The project will replace the existing chargers with 4 smart, bi-directional chargers (thus Vehicle to Building chargers). With the V2B system, the EVs on charge at the end of the working day will initially be available to provide a controlled discharge to City Hall of the residual energy in their batteries, (to a minimum level). This will help City Hall to meet its 35-40 % baseload energy requirement during the expensive evening electricity peak demand period. These smart chargers will permit overnight charging of the EVs to be scheduled from midnight utilising cheaper overnight electricity rates.
However, the Council also requires that the charger hardware is designed to work as standard chargers; then, if there is a problem with the V2B functionality they can still operate.
An interface/integration piece is required to coordinate the workings of both the existing and new elements. The interface should function upstream of City Hall’s Schneider Struxureware BMS. It must also link with the BMS, in order to ensure a mains supply to the EVs when there is no solar supply. V2B chargers do not need to handshake with the BMS, just with the interface. The interface should be installed and commissioned before the V2B chargers arrive. The interface will have 3 operational protocols:
A back office system is required, compliant with the OCPP 1.6 communication protocol. Required functions include:
No single supplier is expected to be able to provide all these elements. Therefore, in procuring the V2B system it is the Council’s preference to receive tenders from consortia, covering all elements; with a Lead Partner identified.
As V2B chargers are not yet commercially available in the UK, any units purchased will not carry the “CE” mark. The Council will need assurance from suppliers that the models they are proposing are ones which they can guarantee will get CE certification. Failure to get this guarantee creates the risk that the Council will have to remove the chargers, once certified ones are on the market.