York’s flagship charging centre for electric vehicles is now powered up and should be ready to use “within days”, according to council chiefs.
The long-awaited Hyperhub at Monk’s Cross has been beset by delays, with the original opening date scheduled for July last year.
Delays with contracts and in establishing a connection to the National Grid have been blamed.
Snagging and “back office set up” issues also remain at the other hyperhub site at Poppleton Bar park and ride.
James Gilchrist, City of York Council’s director of environment, transport and planning, said there had been “a stalling point getting all the necessary permissions in place to get power to the site”.
There are eight chargers at each site, with one at each still requiring a fix.
“Then it will be done – so literally within a few days, a week, I hope we’ll be able to announce that it is available,” Mr Gilchrist said.
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“It’s obviously been a significant project for the city but it is about the additional benefit of those chargers – that’s on top of the improvements we made to the chargers in the city centre.”
Both of the Hyperhub sites will contain four ultra-rapid and four rapid vehicle chargers, which are powered by solar panels.
Monks Cross park and ride will have 30 ‘fast’ charge points, which are less powerful, for customers to use.
Corporate director of place, Neil Ferris, hinted at problems behind the scenes when it came to utility companies dealing with local authorities on major projects.
He said: “The actual impact is quite staggering as to the standing on ceremony around things like wayleaves and the hurdles that you have to jump through with our statutory service providers – it’s all cash up front, it’s all subject to revisions of costs.”
Mr Gilchrist said delays with energy suppliers were factored in during the risk assessment of the project but that the mitigations had not worked “as effectively as we had hoped”.