EV Q&A: Why doesn't Ireland use roadside furniture for charging electric vehicles?

Irish Times

2 days ago

Q: I live in a terraced house, so we can't have a
charging point
. However, there are several public lighting stands around my home that could be used as
electric vehicle (EV)
chargers without posing hazards to either traffic or pedestrians. Why has no one thought to do this, to attach chargers? I've seen loads of them on side streets near where my son lives in London.
–
Tom H, Co Cork
A:
Tom, you are speaking my language here. I too live in a terraced house, and I too cannot have a home charging point – for a whole variety of reasons from the position of the meter box in my house to the fact that I've been told I can neither run a cable-cover across the pavement nor have a swing-out arm to run the cable up and over. Besides, it's free parking on my street and everyone and their dog parks right in front of my place, so I inevitably have to park far, far away.
Right, personal whinging done with, it's important to remember that this is – and will be a – significant factor for
electric vehicle
uptake in the years to come.
According to data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) about 42 per cent of Irish houses are of a full-detached design, while another 3.3 per cent are semidetached (these figures are from 2017, but they're the most recent ones we have).
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It's fairly safe to assume that a fully-detached house will have a driveway or at least some space around it where a charging point can be fitted and a car can be pulled up. With semidetached houses, that certainty falls a touch, but let's say there's a statistically reasonable guess that around 44 per cent of Irish houses have a driveway.
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Electricity supply and internal wiring allowing, all of these people can to get a home charging point and have their shiny new (or approved used) EV ready to rock with a full battery every morning.
However, the mathematically astute among you will have noticed that leaves a probable 66 per cent of Irish houses which either may not or just flat out don't have any off-street parking. There will also be an enormous urban-rural divide. Where I live, for example, the vast majority of the houses on the streets around me have no driveway and only access to on-street parking. With predictable helpfulness, the nearest on-street EV charging point is a 30-minute walk. Not so horrible on a nice summer's evening; much less agreeable on a November night.
Even if I were always prepared to make the schlep to the charger and back, the 10-hour maximum charging time, before 'overstay' fees kick in, would mean that assuming I connected the car at 6pm and walked home for my dinner, I'd have to return at 4am to collect my car before being penalised. Never forget: the very fact that overstay fees exist is a tacit admission that the public charging network is not fit for purpose.
But I'm drifting slightly from the point. There are a small handful of lamp-post chargers in Ireland, mostly found in the Dublin suburbs of Dún Laoghaire and Malahide. They were installed on a trial basis by Ubitricity and others, but the trial has long since ended and some of the charging points have now been removed.
Why? Well, a predictable lack of focus and energy on the part of local authorities I'm afraid, although there are potential issues with lamp-post and other kerbside chargers.
We've previously asked Zero Emissions Vehicles Ireland (ZEVI) about this, and their response was: 'In other countries existing lamp-posts have been retrofitted with EV Charge Points with the meter for measuring electricity fitted to the charging Cable (ie external to the lamp-post). This allows for the existing lamp-post – where suitably located – to have a charge point installed using spare capacity within the post; usually 2kW to 3KW.
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'In Ireland this solution is not currently viable given the requirement from ESB to have an in-built meter and a separation from ESB and charge point infrastructure. This requires a bespoke lamp-post to be installed with enough space to include an ESB meter.
'The ESB is considering a bespoke lamp-post solution and are looking at potential pilots for this solution. However, it should be noted that this solution will most likely add significant costs over retrofitting of existing lamp-posts and the use case for this solution will only be considered following the review of any pilot.
'It should also be noted that any lamp-post solution would only be considered where the lamp-post is positioned at the front of the footpath and any lamp-post positioned at the rear would not be suitable for health and safety purposes, with cable not being permitted across footpaths.'
There are some issues with this response, not least that recent research shows that most lamp-posts have sufficient spare energy capacity to deliver around 5kW of power to a charger, which isn't too shabby at all.
Equally, installers with whom we've spoken say that the tech is versatile enough that a charging point can be fitted to almost any piece of roadside furniture – bollards, for example.
There are also mixed messages from Government about this. While ZEVI seems to largely rule out lamp-post chargers, a Department of Transport paper in 2023 called for a 'world class' EV charging network to be up and running by 2025, with then-Minister for Transport, Eamon Ryan, specifically saying: 'There is need for a seamless public charging network that will provide for situations or instances where home charging is not possible, such as on-street and residential charging, destination charging and workplace charging.'
Once again, those among you with a head for figures will have noticed that it is now 2025, and we most certainly do not have a 'world-class' charging set-up.
Perhaps, as is so often the case, we need to look to Scandinavia. The Swedes have already introduced legislation that demands a minimum number of charging points per number of parking spaces offered by businesses or other properties. Meanwhile, in some suburbs of Stockholm, pencil-thin kerbside EV chargers are so numerous up and down some streets that they don't even bother marking out 'EV Only' parking spaces.
Alas, such urgency and forward thinking seems to be, as ever, rather lacking here at home. Which means Tom and I are going to have to keep charging at the nearest fast-charger, more than doubling the cost of running an EV, until some more on-street electric car chargers are rolled out.