Using lamp posts to charge EV’s

[Welchyboy1]

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

 

[ipf]

Don't worry, someone will have cut the flex to nick the cable for scrap.

Or just for the sake of it, in our caring, sharing society.

Seriously though, there'll be all sorts of problems besides all the arguments....considering the present parking problems.?

 

[Simon47]

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.

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)

You forgot that the long term is that no one owns a car.

That is where many people want us to be.

You dial up and a driverless car arrives and takes you where you want to go.

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.

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.

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.

 

[ipf]

Sticking finger in the air

Thinking of wind power??? Better off everybody eating beans and cabbage....

 

[DPG]

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.

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.

 

[Simon47]

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.

 

[DPG]

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.

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.

 

[MJPD29]

I've seen certain groups of people do a similar thing already with their electric caravans.

The creativity never ceases to surprise me. Got to give it to them

 

[Taylortwocities]

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.

 

[Gavin John Hyde]

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.

 

[Zerax]

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.

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...

 

[Zerax]

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.

 

[telectrix]

back to lamp post chargers. the local dogs will have a field day. not just a post to pi$$ up but a choice of 4 wheels as well.

 

[pc1966]

The efficiency of solar panels is continuously improving and has come on leaps and bounds recently.

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.

 

[pc1966]

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.

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.

 

[stevethesparks]

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.

It's bad enough at the moment with people nicking catalytic converters in broad daylight, nicking solar panels with just be another nightmare.