A reader asks: given the preponderance of street parking in various Dublin neighborhoods, I wonder why on earth the powers that be have not invested in recharging streetlights? It’s commonplace in London but I haven’t seen any trace of it here. I read somewhere that the only VE A meter approved in Ireland would not fit into a lamp post – and yet beyond water it does. Any ideas?

This is one of the few EV questions we’ve received where the rumor turns out to be – at least partially – true.

Our first point of contact for this question was the Zero Emissions Vehicles Ireland (ZEVI) office, which is part of the Ministry of Transportand the government agency tasked with accelerating the rollout of electric car charging infrastructure and making electric cars more attractive to Irish car buyers.

When we asked a question about “wrong meter size for street lights”, ZEVI’s response was: “In other countries, existing street lights have been fitted with electric vehicle charging points with the meter to measure electricity installed on the charging cable, that is to say external to the street lamp. This allows the existing street light, when suitably located, to have a charging point installed using the available capacity in the pole, typically 2 kW to 3 KW.

In Ireland this solution is not viable given the ESB requirement to have an integrated meter and separation of the ESB and charge point infrastructure. This requires the installation of a bespoke street light with enough space to include an ESB meter.

The ESB is considering a bespoke street light solution and is investigating potential pilot projects for this solution. However, it should be noted that this solution will most likely add significant costs compared to retrofitting existing street lights and the use case for this solution will only be considered after any pilot projects have been reviewed.

“It should also be noted that any street light solution would only be considered where the light pole is positioned to the front of the pavement and any street light positioned to the rear would not be suitable for health and safety purposes with a cable not be allowed to cross pedestrian paths.

So yes, the story is true: ESB meters don’t fit in streetlights and that’s why we can’t recharge streetlights.

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However, the story doesn’t end there, as there are actually a few streetlight chargers in Ireland. Ubitricity has fitted a handful of streetlights with charging sockets in the Fingal County Council area of ​​north Dublin, with the council covering the cost of charging so it does not need to be specifically metered .

When first installed in 2018, Ubitricity estimated the installation cost was only around €1,500 – low for an electric vehicle charging station – and that the technology was so versatile that it could be installed on almost all types of road furniture, street lamps. at the terminals. Unfortunately, and probably because of a counting problem, the idea never took off.

Then again, this might be something of a blessing in disguise. Streetlight chargers tend to operate only at very low charging speeds – around 3kW, or about as much as a household socket. This was perfectly acceptable when the most popular electric cars were the Nissan Leaf and Renault Zoe Mk1, with 30 kWh batteries. Plug a 77 kWh Volkswagen ID.4 into a 3 kW charger today and you’ll sit there for 25 hours to get a full charge…

Similarly, some studies on streetlight charging have pointed out that streetlights are not installed at car-length intervals and that parking spaces were in most cases not specifically demarcated for electric vehicles, which which leads to the possibility of “charging rage” as desperate electric vehicle drivers protest against internal combustion car drivers careless about parking. There were also concerns that streetlight wiring – intended only to provide enough power for a sodium bulb – would not be up to the rigors of electric vehicle charging.

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However, the latter point now appears moot, as in a recent report UK Power Networks informed charging operators that it now appears that the cabling inside most street lights is robust enough to provide a charge of 5 kW, which is at least a bit more like it – now it will only take 15 hours to charge this ID.4, and given that almost no one ever charges completely flat, nightly charging from a floor lamp suddenly starts to seem like a practical proposition again.

It won’t be an easy path to mass streetlight charging – the design of ESB meters will need to be changed and concerns about designated parking will need to be addressed, so don’t hold your breath. It seems, however, that charging streetlights is actually a good idea, and so I hope it can now start to gain some decent momentum.