United Utilities is introducing four electric HGVs, which are powered by poo.
The North West water company’s vehicles are based at its Bioresources Centre in Manchester, where they are used to transport sewage sludge, a by-product of sewage treatment, from other wastewater treatment facilities across the region for processing at the Davyhulme site. They are then charged up at Davyhulme using the renewable electricity, which is produced on site from the processed sewage sludge.
Tom Lissett, bioresources and green energy director at United Utilities explains: “This is a really exciting development and an important step towards our net zero carbon targets.
“A lot of people don’t realise that at the end of the wastewater treatment process we are left with a sludge which is used to generate renewable energy. We call this ‘black gold’ because of the renewable energy we can release when it is processed.
“Using the vehicles to collect the sludge and then using the clean energy it generates to charge their batteries is a great way of maximising the potential of that resource. We’ve recently trialled one electric HGV so we know it is a good solution for us.”
The biogas generated in the anaerobic digestion process goes to a combined heat and power unit where it is converted into 100% renewable energy, which will be used to power the HGV charging points.
United Utilities is the only water company in the UK taking part in the £100m-plus ‘Electric Freightway’ project led by Gridserve and funded as part of the Department for Transport and Innovate UK-backed Zero Emission HGV and Infrastructure Demonstrator programme.
The water company joins a consortium of 33 companies including Sainsbury’s, Amazon and the Royal Mail taking part in the project, which will run until 2030. It aims to lay the foundations for one of the biggest and most advanced charging networks designed specifically for electric HGVs (eHGVs) while also building an evidence base on which zero emission HGV technology is better suited for specific use cases.
The project will also see the introduction of high-power charging bays which will be installed by Gridserve later this year, to ensure maximum uptime for the eHGVs. United Utilities will share learnings and data with Hitachi ZeroCarbon through the Electric Freightway programme which will provide insights to help support the UK’s transition to EVs.
