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How the Model Works
A school car park sits empty exactly when home charging is hardest for local residents, overnight, at weekends and through the holidays. Open the chargers to the public in those windows, set a tariff above your electricity cost, and the margin is income for the school.
The returns on a typical school site are modest and real, a few thousand pounds a year on a well placed car park rather than a windfall. The smart charging platforms we install handle the public access side automatically: app payments, separate staff and public tariffs, opening hours that match your site, and monthly statements for the business manager.
The Honest Take on the Big Numbers
You may have seen fully funded offers advertising up to £35,000 a year for a school. Read those contracts carefully. The provider funds the installation, takes the lion’s share of revenue on a long contract, and the school’s cut depends on utilisation assumptions that suit the brochure. Some sites will do well. A village school two miles from the nearest main road will not.
Our approach is simpler. Own your chargers with the £2,000 per socket grant covering most of the cost, keep all the revenue, and set tariffs you control. On a well located site, socket for socket, ownership beats a revenue share within a couple of years.
RELATED: How much EV charging grant can a school get?
The Two Checks Before You Start
Governance first. Charging the public is trading income, so academy trusts and charitable schools should run the arrangement past their finance team for VAT and trading rules. It is routine, most trusts already handle lettings income the same way, but it belongs in the plan from day one.
Safeguarding second. Public access happens when pupils are not on site, gates and signage keep the arrangement clean, and the chargers lock to staff only access during the school day. We design that into the setup rather than bolting it on.
