Using lamp posts to charge EV’s

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Welchyboy1

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Heres one to consider, the apparent government solution to charging EV vehicles for people without a driveway is to install a dual 16A charger on each street lamp post

this will also remove the requirement or temptation to trail charging leads across the pavement and walkways from peoples homes

due to the lamp post now having an LED lamp there is spare capacity to charge peoples vehicles

Fantastic idea!

How the hell is that going to work?? Potentially 7.5KW per lamp post all night long, over entire streets!

what cabling did the use for the street furniture? Have they actually considered the load implications?

Has someone not really thought that through, or am I missing something really obvious
 
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and just imagine the volt drop with 10 EVs all plugged into a street of lamp posts.
second thoughts, VD is irrelevant as the cable would be melted anyway.
 
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It’s a ridiculous idea. We don’t all live in cities where the biggest car journey is to the shops and back.

My van can 100 miles a day just home to wholesaler, to job, to next job and back home.

I’d need 2 chargers, car and van... and a 3rd for visitors?

How are vans going to cover hundreds of miles with heavy loads in the delivery timescales we’ve come to expect?

What’s the likely lifespan of the battery’s in electric vehicles, and how much to replace? I bet it’s much more than the apparent savings in fuel and road tax.
 
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It would depend on how the lamp posts are fed.
Some are a direct individual connection to the adjacent local DNO network, so could easilly handle extra load or the cable could easilly be upgraded.
Others, like where I live on a relatively new (30years old) estate have a feed looped between groups of posts then a single connection to the DNO supply, that wouldn't be able to take too much, if any extra laod, but wouldn't need to as everyone has a driveway.
Major roads are quite often grouped then the groups fed from a single cabinet with a DNO connection.

There will be several different solutions depending on the existing supply.
I think it's it's just as much using the lamp post location and running an extra supply so as not to clutter the street up as actually using the DNO supply at the post.
 
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The Devil is in the detail, if they we are going to be paying to fit these then presumably they will also factor in the cable requirements and DNO smart load management as well.

Are street lights centrally switched or permanently live with their own photo-sensor switches? That alone might demand new cabling.
 
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Seems like a good idea to me. Saves the problem of people with no off street parking having to string cables across pavements.

This sort of thing will be common place in a few years. Along with probably lots of other things we haven't even thought of yet.

And when are electric cars going to be built with solar panels in the roof as standard? Needs to be happening now, and then it will reduce grid/DNO demand problems.
 
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Welchyboy1 said:
Heres one to consider, the apparent government solution to charging EV vehicles for people without a driveway is to install a dual 16A charger on each street lamp post

this will also remove the requirement or temptation to trail charging leads across the pavement and walkways from peoples homes

due to the lamp post now having an LED lamp there is spare capacity to charge peoples vehicles

Fantastic idea!

How the hell is that going to work?? Potentially 7.5KW per lamp post all night long, over entire streets!

what cabling did the use for the street furniture? Have they actually considered the load implications?

Has someone not really thought that through, or am I missing something really obvious
Click to expand...
You forgot that the long term is that no one owns a car. You dial up and a driverless car arrives and takes you where you want to go.
This implies car parks of cars strategically placed with power points.

depending what you pay there may be cars doing small detours to pick up people going in the same direction.

school runs will also use driverless vehicles and multi- pickups

no garages and no street parking.
 
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DPG said:
And when are electric cars going to be built with solar panels in the roof as standard? Needs to be happening now, and then it will reduce grid/DNO demand problems.
Click to expand...
Some practical problems with that. Noticed how the panels are flat, and people don't like driving vans with flat roofs ? Ican see a lot of people saying "every little helps", and in principle it might, but realistically without a major breakthrough in panel technology, you're not going to geet much more than around 250W on a car roof (if that).
Lets put that in perspective. They say that depending on the car, just plugging in (13A plug, so 3kW) can need anything from 8 hours to 24 hours+ to charge. You've got 1/12 of the power available, and it's only there for 1/3 of the day in winter (assuming no shading). So now you are up to 8-24h * 12 * 3, or ... thinks ... 12 to 36 days to charge. Now even assuming you don't use all the capacity - needing several days to recover from one day in the office would be pushing it.

Sticking finger in the air, I could see it making at best 5% difference in overall load - at a great expense (as if lecky cars weren't already expensive enough)
Ziggie said:
You forgot that the long term is that no one owns a car.
Click to expand...
That is where many people want us to be.
Ziggie said:
You dial up and a driverless car arrives and takes you where you want to go.
Click to expand...
Ah, you've gone too far. The end game isn't that, it's no cars - we walk everywhere, and magically jobs move to within walking distance of homes (or vice-versa). Oh well , those rows of back-back houses will come back into fashion.
David Prosser said:
Well I'm confused on how this prevents trailing leads across the pavement. Where I live the lamposts are on the inside part of the pathway not the road side.
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You beat me to it, that's the case on our street. Plus, there's only room to park on one side, and some of the lamp posts are on the wrong side of the road. And then what happens when both sockets are in use, and more people get home - guess that's tough. Or they'll unplug whoever's already there to plug themselves in. Oh, and not to mention the very long cables to get from the lamp post to the car that's two cars away - which will inevitably get run over and/or parked on by someone else.
And before we moved, some days we were doing well if we got to park on our own street at all.
I can see a fresh subject for online videos. Forget the parking wars, lets film the charging wars.
 
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Simon47 said:
Some practical problems with that. Noticed how the panels are flat, and people don't like driving vans with flat roofs ? Ican see a lot of people saying "every little helps", and in principle it might, but realistically without a major breakthrough in panel technology, you're not going to geet much more than around 250W on a car roof (if that).
Lets put that in perspective. They say that depending on the car, just plugging in (13A plug, so 3kW) can need anything from 8 hours to 24 hours+ to charge. You've got 1/12 of the power available, and it's only there for 1/3 of the day in winter (assuming no shading). So now you are up to 8-24h * 12 * 3, or ... thinks ... 12 to 36 days to charge. Now even assuming you don't use all the capacity - needing several days to recover from one day in the office would be pushing it.

Sticking finger in the air, I could see it making at best 5% difference in overall load - at a great expense (as if lecky cars weren't already expensive enough)

That is where many people want us to be.

Ah, you've gone too far. The end game isn't that, it's no cars - we walk everywhere, and magically jobs move to within walking distance of homes (or vice-versa). Oh well , those rows of back-back houses will come back into fashion.

You beat me to it, that's the case on our street. Plus, there's only room to park on one side, and some of the lamp posts are on the wrong side of the road. And then what happens when both sockets are in use, and more people get home - guess that's tough. Or they'll unplug whoever's already there to plug themselves in. Oh, and not to mention the very long cables to get from the lamp post to the car that's two cars away - which will inevitably get run over and/or parked on by someone else.
And before we moved, some days we were doing well if we got to park on our own street at all.
I can see a fresh subject for online videos. Forget the parking wars, lets film the charging wars.
Click to expand...

Solar panels don't have to be flat, they can be made flexible, or to curved shapes.

It doesn't have to give anywhere near a full charge, just a bit of a top up. And it's pretty much for free.

This will become standard in a few years.
 
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I think it will be a long time, i.e. for "a few", make that "quite a few" years.
Non-flat panels cost more than flat ones, and I suspect have poorer performance still. So the cost benefit analysis isn't going to favour them for a long time.
And on our drive, they'd produce "not a lot" pretty well any time of year. Out and about, well that will vary.
 
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Simon47 said:
I think it will be a long time, i.e. for "a few", make that "quite a few" years.
Non-flat panels cost more than flat ones, and I suspect have poorer performance still. So the cost benefit analysis isn't going to favour them for a long time.
And on our drive, they'd produce "not a lot" pretty well any time of year. Out and about, well that will vary.
Click to expand...

The efficiency of solar panels is continuously improving and has come on leaps and bounds recently. And once car manufacturers start using them in huge quantities the price will rapidly reduce.
I agree it will take a while, but it will happen.

Not sure I get the difference between a car parked in the open and a car moving as regards sun exposure? My car is parked on my drive all day or at work in a large car park. In both places it receives many hours of daylight.
 
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My two penn’orth

The smart meter roll out has been going for nearly ten years. The programme is not much more than 30% complete.

In ten years time the sale of new cars will be all electric (plus a transition period for hybrids).

Given this, the chance of an adequate charging infrastructure being in place in ten years is zero.
 
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you will find that the lamp posts work as a satellite and hub system. each group of say 5 lamps posts will have an allocated capacity of say 100 amps. if 2 cars are charging they each get 32 amps if 5 cars are charging then it might be 20 amps each. a lot of granny chargers plugged into a 13 amp socket only charge at 10amps so you could easily add some of these into lamp posts without much in the way of alterations to the grid.
I think though you will see a mixture of different charge rates depending on local demand on the grid and infrastructure. the things is most people do not need to charge their car to full every day. especially as range of the new evs is getting better every year a bit like computers did in the 90s and early 2000s.
 
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Ziggie said:
Some of this was considered some time ago. The man who designed Letchworth , the first garden city thought that the town would have about 6 cars which would be shared.
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That reminds me of a housing estate that's just being built near me... the official planning documentation stipulated that a notice board be erected at the entrance/exit of the site, to which the local bus timetable be attached. This would then drastically reduce the vehicle traffic in the area.

I can only guess that they have the advantage of a university education...
 
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From what I read/hear... if you don't believe in EVs, you'll find a million and one reasons never to have one and find every single issue with them. On the other hand... if you love 'em, you won't see any of the downsides...

IMHO the reality is somewhere in the middle... currently, EVs are not great for everyone... but would still work for 80% or users. The whole range thing is largely not an issue anymore, as is battery degradation over the lifetime... they've proved the test of time. I think the major problems are lack of second hand vehicles and the high price of new ones... manufacturers seem to be using the 'what the market will bear' pricing model, so they are more pricey than they should be.

The question of charging is not an issue for most people... because if you can't charge at home, there are fast chargers/work chargers etc. and this will only get better as demand grows.
 
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DPG said:
The efficiency of solar panels is continuously improving and has come on leaps and bounds recently.
Click to expand...
Solar power is 1kW/m^2 which presents a fundamental limit on what you can get, even before you consider sun elevation w.r.t. panels, cloud cover and shadows from buildings, etc., and finally conversion efficiency.

I would love to have solar on my car roof just to stop it going flat if it is unused for a couple of weeks, but it won't make much difference to EV charging.
 
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Zerax said:
The question of charging is not an issue for most people... because if you can't charge at home, there are fast chargers/work chargers etc. and this will only get better as demand grows.
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I would say the reverse.

For most folk (even if they won't admit it) doing over 100 miles in one journey is rare so range is a minor issue.

For the vast majority without driveways who rely on on-street parking the availability of charging is going to be the #1 issue (avoiding the debate on cost factors that are subject to takes and/or incentives). I don't know of many employers who have car parks that are EV equipped or even could be at any reasonable cost.

A few (like my previous employer, a Scottish university) have a token number of EV locations around campus but I doubt it covers more than 2-5% of those using cars to work there. The majority of them can't park on campus so pi55 off the local residents by parking in the streets near by for around a half mile or more.
 
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DPG said:
Solar panels don't have to be flat, they can be made flexible, or to curved shapes.

It doesn't have to give anywhere near a full charge, just a bit of a top up. And it's pretty much for free.

This will become standard in a few years.
Click to expand...
It's bad enough at the moment with people nicking catalytic converters in broad daylight, nicking solar panels with just be another nightmare.
 
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nicking solar panels with just be another nightmare.
never thought of that. need to have a word with the lads and source a fence to move them on. easier than bricking up to get the wheels off.
 
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Zerax said:
IMHO the reality is somewhere in the middle
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Agreed. IFF they were available within my price range (which they aren't) then they'd be ideal for most of our journeys. And I have the benefit of having my own drive.
Zerax said:
The question of charging is not an issue for most people... because if you can't charge at home, there are fast chargers/work chargers etc. and this will only get better as demand grows.
Click to expand...
I disagree.
IFF we put the laws of physics aside for a minute, have a look at a typical forecourt when it's not very quiet. Take my local supermarkets - Morrisons has 12 pumps, Asda has 8, Tesco 12 (from memory) - and stand alone filling stations - 4, 6, and 8 pumps each from memory. Yes, they all have quiet times, but they all also have busy times - i.e. when people want to use them. Lets say it typically takes up to 10 minutes between arriving at the pump and driving away. Fast chargers take something like 1/2 hour and don't complete a charge in that time. So immediately 1/3 of the throughput.
No problem you say, plug in and go and do your shopping. Yeah, and how popular will you be with the angry mob waiting to charge when you arrive back in an hour or two's time ?
But I did mention the laws of physics. When multiple cars are charging, I believe many of these fast chargers reduce their power so that the combined load doesn't exceed what the local DNO can provide. So when it's busy, you can forget about that 1/2 hour 80% fill.

And that means you are back to having many dozens of charging points to cater for people going shopping for an hour or two while the car charges. I don't see there being much appetite for that for a while.


And for a bit of a laugh (or cry depending on your viewpoint), someone has worked out that a tesla now costs more to charge than to put petrol in a similar petrol car. https://www.whichcar.com.au/car-news/teslas-now-more-expensive-to-charge-than-petrol-cars So you pay a massive markup for having a lecky car, then if you can't charge at home you pay more than if you were putting petrol in.
 
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Simon47 said:
Agreed. IFF they were available within my price range (which they aren't) then they'd be ideal for most of our journeys. And I have the benefit of having my own drive.

I disagree.
IFF we put the laws of physics aside for a minute, have a look at a typical forecourt when it's not very quiet. Take my local supermarkets - Morrisons has 12 pumps, Asda has 8, Tesco 12 (from memory) - and stand alone filling stations - 4, 6, and 8 pumps each from memory. Yes, they all have quiet times, but they all also have busy times - i.e. when people want to use them. Lets say it typically takes up to 10 minutes between arriving at the pump and driving away. Fast chargers take something like 1/2 hour and don't complete a charge in that time. So immediately 1/3 of the throughput.
No problem you say, plug in and go and do your shopping. Yeah, and how popular will you be with the angry mob waiting to charge when you arrive back in an hour or two's time ?
But I did mention the laws of physics. When multiple cars are charging, I believe many of these fast chargers reduce their power so that the combined load doesn't exceed what the local DNO can provide. So when it's busy, you can forget about that 1/2 hour 80% fill.

And that means you are back to having many dozens of charging points to cater for people going shopping for an hour or two while the car charges. I don't see there being much appetite for that for a while.


And for a bit of a laugh (or cry depending on your viewpoint), someone has worked out that a tesla now costs more to charge than to put petrol in a similar petrol car. https://www.whichcar.com.au/car-news/teslas-now-more-expensive-to-charge-than-petrol-cars So you pay a massive markup for having a lecky car, then if you can't charge at home you pay more than if you were putting petrol in.
Click to expand...

I agreed with your point, and Also disagree. I hate life on the fence.
 
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And of course of the 10000+ houses that have gone up in the nice 'garden village' near me - most have no pavement in front of the house, let alone a drive, but an allocated parking space some way away where it's never going to be possible to install EV charging.
 
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Welchyboy1

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