Drivers of state-of-the art electric vehicles will be able to power up courtesy of a new charging centre in the city.

Gridserve has set up a swanky site at Broadland Gate Business Park near Postwick.

The high-tech site is part of a £1bn investment rollout by the firm across the country.

And now the company has revealed the site will open next week on April 22.

Toddington Harper, chief executive of Gridserve said: “Gridserve’s Norwich electric forecourt will prove there is another choice for drivers.

"We’re creating an electric vehicle charging experience that is fundamentally better than filling your car with carcinogenic petrol or diesel."

%image(15609819, type="article-full", alt="The Gridserve electric forecourt is located at Broadland Gate Business Park, in Maple Way.")

The forecourt is only Gridserve's second in the country.

It boasts an all-new design and has the ability to provide up to 350kW of high-power charging for 22 vehicles.

There will also be six low-power charging bays and a further eight bays for the Tesla supercharger network.

%image(14475747, type="article-full", alt="Toddington Harper, chief executive of Gridserve said: “Gridserve’s Norwich electric forecourt will prove there is another choice for drivers."")

Mr Harper added: “We believe that the forecourt will become a catalyst for behaviour change in Norfolk, sparking an increase in uptake of clean electric vehicles – just as we saw with the opening of our first electric forecourt in Braintree, Essex.

"The Norwich electric forecourt is the sort of facility that people who are nervous about making the switch to electric vehicles are looking for, and we hope that the people of Norwich, and indeed Norfolk, will now look at electric vehicles in a new light.”

With the development and opening of the new forecourt, the initiative has created more than 25 full-time jobs through the design, engineering, construction and operation phases.

%image(15609828, type="article-full", alt="The Gridserve electric forecourt will generate around 25 employment opportunities.")

A Gridserve spokesman said: "All of the power delivered on site will either be zero carbon or net zero carbon energy.

"Gridserve saw electric vehicle registrations in the local area where the first forecourt was set up, in Braintree, Essex, within the space of a year surpassing any national average increases."

The announcement comes amid plans of a £500,000 investment being made to investigate a potential zero emission zone in the centre of Norwich.