GRIDSERVE: The UK’s Most Sustainable EV Charging Provider

When Toddington Harper founded GRIDSERVE in 2017, the UK's electric vehicle landscape was starkly different to how it appears now.

Public charging was patchy, unreliable and often frustratingly slow. 

That is to say nothing of “range anxiety” (the fear that an EV will not have enough power to reach the nearest charging station), which was the reason why millions of drivers were reluctant to make the switch. 

But Toddington, in the way that many great entrepreneurs do, had a simple but game-changing idea: to use solar power to charge EVs.

Today, GRIDSERVE's proprietary technology helps thousands of drivers across the UK to charge their vehicles using little more than the power of the sun.

The energy ecosystem behind GRIDSERVE's offering is called “Sun-to-Wheel” – a play on the oil industry’s “well-to-wheel” concept for a new generation of sustainable mobility.

The concept is elegant in its logic. Just one acre of solar panels in England can generate enough energy to power a million miles of EV driving annually. 

Combine that with advanced battery storage and the result is clean, renewable energy available around the clock, with no fossil fuels required.

GRIDSERVE’s coming-of-age moment

The pivotal moment for Toddington’s firm came on 7 December 2020, when GRIDSERVE opened the UK's first all-electric car charging forecourt, next to the A131 in Great Notley, Essex.

Here was not merely a row of chargers in a windswept, provincial car park, but a glimpse of the future.

Paired with the solar farm at Clayhill, around 50 miles away, the site can rapidly charge up to 36 vehicles with 100% renewable electricity, with 20 minutes of charging from the 350kW chargers giving a customer up to 200 miles of range.

The site also contains a 6MWh battery that is capable of storing enough energy for 24,000 miles of EV driving, which was installed to balance energy resources and keep prices low for drivers. 

The project received attention from the national media, and the “What Car? Innovation Award” followed in early 2022, recognising the forecourt as a genuine leap forward for the industry.

Reinvigorating the UK’s Electric Highway

The company's next, even bolder move came in July 2021. GRIDSERVE purchased Ecotricity's "Electric Highway" charging network, which has chargers at almost all UK motorway services. 

The Electric Highway had been a pioneering network in its day, but its ageing infrastructure was crying out for an upgrade. GRIDSERVE wasted little time in getting to work. In the first phase of its renovation, all the Electric Highway sites were replaced with more modern devices that featured contactless payment. 

The firm then added "Electric Super Hubs", with six to twelve high-power chargers of up to 350kW, at many service areas operated by Moto – the UK’s largest operator of motorway service stations.

GRIDSERVE's growth only increased in speed through 2023 and 2024. In 2023, a record December saw the firm open more High Power charging bays in a single month than in the whole of 2022. 

Across the whole of 2023, GRIDSERVE delivered more than 1.9 million charging sessions. That equates to more than 160 million zero-emission miles.

In 2024 alone, GRIDSERVE added around 400 High Power charging bays to its network, with new key locations including the Stevenage Electric Forecourt and expansions at busy sites like Moto Exeter, Moto Cherwell Valley and Moto Rugby. 

By early 2025, the company was operating more than 190 locations with 1,400 charging bays and delivering over 250,000 charging sessions monthly.

The hard work continues

In recent years, GRIDSERVE has been working hard to close the gaps that still remain in Britain's charging landscape. Of those, one of the most significant is electric HGV charging, which is a recognised barrier for haulage operations considering making the switch.

The eHGV charging hubs at Extra Baldock on the A1(M) and Moto Exeter on the M5 are the first sites delivered under the Electric Freightway project, funded through the Department for Transport. 

To mark the occasion, an electric DAF XF completed a 200-mile journey between the two hubs using the new public charging infrastructure, proving that carbon-free freight is no longer a distant ambition but a legitimate reality.

GRIDSERVE has also been expanding its partnership with Extra MSA, one of the UK’s foremost service station developers. The two have collaborated on seven all-new Super Hubs in some key areas, with GRIDSERVE's expansion expected to add 96 high-power charging bays across the Extra estate by late 2026.

Each Super Hub will feature the latest 400kW-capable chargers, delivering enough energy for the latest models to add over 100 miles of range in less than ten minutes.

The next chapter

At the helm of this next chapter is a significant new appointment. GRIDSERVE announced Daniel Kunkel as its new CEO in February 2025, taking over from Roy Williamson who had assumed interim leadership following the departure of Founder Toddington Harper.

Daniel made the move to GRIDSERVE following his role tenure as CEO of ubitricity, which grew to become one of Europe's largest public on-street EV charging networks under his leadership, with 13,500 charge points. 

The broader picture now looks encouraging for GRIDSERVE. According to the SMMT (the UK automotive sector’s largest trade association), around one in five new cars in the UK is now battery electric.

That makes the UK Europe's second biggest new electric car market, closing the gap on Germany. Meanwhile, charge point numbers have doubled in the past two years, with almost one charger for every EV on the road, including home and workplace chargers.

For GRIDSERVE, the challenge has never been greater, but nor has the opportunity.

The company that once opened a single pioneering forecourt in Essex now operates the most-used charging network in the country, with its sights firmly set on freight, retail, destination charging, and markets far beyond these shores. 

With experienced new leadership at the helm and a bold infrastructure agenda already under way, GRIDSERVE looks well-placed to remain at the very heart of the country’s electric future.