IN Brief:
- Zest will deploy ultra-rapid EV charging at nine Heart of England Co-op stores across the Midlands.
- Zest will fund and operate the installations under a multi-year commercial agreement.
- The scheme joins a UK public network that contained 121,171 chargers at 1 July 2026, including 28,887 rated at 50kW or above.
Zest has agreed to fund, install, and operate ultra-rapid electric-vehicle charging infrastructure at nine Heart of England Co-op stores across the Midlands under a new multi-year partnership.
The rollout will cover a mixture of existing and new stores, with confirmed locations including Coventry, Nuneaton, Wellesbourne, and Southam. Zest has not disclosed the total number of chargers, individual site capacities, or the ratings of the equipment beyond describing the installations as ultra-rapid.
The funding structure places the capital investment and long-term operation with the charge-point operator rather than the retailer. Zest will therefore take responsibility for an infrastructure portfolio whose commercial performance will depend on utilisation, electricity costs, equipment availability, maintenance, and the capacity available at each store.
The Department for Transport defines ultra-rapid public charging as equipment rated at 150kW or above. At those power levels, even relatively small groups of chargers can create significant electrical demand when multiple vehicles use them simultaneously.
A site with four 150kW chargers, for example, has a theoretical charger load of 600kW before diversity or load-management controls are applied. Larger charging units can push the maximum requirement substantially higher, making the site’s existing connection capacity an important part of project design.
Zest has not disclosed whether the nine Co-op locations will need reinforced distribution connections, local battery storage, or active load management. Those decisions will depend on the number and rating of chargers at each location, the store’s existing electrical demand, and available capacity on the local network.
Retail charging adds another high-power load
Retail sites provide a different operating environment from motorway charging hubs. Drivers are already stopping for another purpose, giving charging operators a predictable dwell period, but the installation still has to deliver enough energy during that visit to justify using higher-powered equipment.
That creates an electrical trade-off. Slower destination chargers can operate with lower instantaneous demand but require vehicles to remain connected for longer, while ultra-rapid equipment compresses energy delivery into a shorter period and can place much greater demand on the local connection.
Load management can reduce that peak by allocating available power between chargers according to vehicle demand. The approach can avoid or defer some network reinforcement, although it also means the nominal rating printed on an individual charger does not guarantee that every connected vehicle can receive that power simultaneously.
Connection design therefore has to consider the store as a whole. Existing refrigeration, lighting, heating, ventilation, and other electrical loads compete with charging infrastructure for capacity behind the same connection unless the chargers are supplied through a separate or reinforced arrangement.
The wider UK public network contained 121,171 chargers at 1 July 2026, according to Department for Transport statistics. Of those, 28,887 were rated at 50kW or above, covering both rapid and ultra-rapid infrastructure.
Ultra-rapid chargers rated at 150kW and above represented 12% of all public chargers. Another 12% sat within the rapid 50kW-to-below-150kW band, while lower-power standard and standard-plus equipment accounted for the remainder.
The statistics also show that 52% of public chargers were classified as destination infrastructure, compared with 11% classed as en-route. Retail charging can overlap those definitions because stores are destinations in their own right, while high-power equipment can support drivers seeking a shorter stop during a longer journey.
That mix makes retail property attractive to charging operators. Stores provide established parking areas and regular visitor traffic, while customers already have a reason to remain on site for long enough to add useful vehicle range.
The advantage does not remove connection constraints. Growth in individual charging locations ultimately aggregates into additional demand on local feeders and substations, particularly where several high-power sites are concentrated in the same town or distribution-network area.
Distribution operators therefore have to plan for the combined effect of charging alongside heat pumps, solar generation, battery storage, new housing, and other forms of electrification. Each retail installation may be comparatively modest in isolation, but the network has to accommodate simultaneous demand rather than simply count the number of chargers installed.
Zest has been building a wider retail and destination-charging portfolio, including existing work with Central Co-op and Aldi. The Heart of England agreement extends that model across another group of sites rather than creating a single stand-alone charging hub.
The project remains short on engineering detail at announcement stage. Charger numbers, equipment ratings, installation dates, connection requirements, and per-site capacities have not yet been disclosed, and the refined article does not infer them.
Those figures will define the electrical scale of the nine-site rollout as individual stores move into delivery. For now, the confirmed development is the operating model: Zest will finance and run ultra-rapid charging across the estate under a multi-year agreement, leaving the network and equipment design to emerge on a site-by-site basis.
