Written evidence submitted by Richard Stobart (EVS0009)

 

Introduction

In 2018 I founded a streetlight EV charging company driven by the need to charge my EV. I live in terraced housing in London and so I do not have a driveway. In this evidence I would like to dispel the negative press coverage about “slow” streetlight charging.  I have driven an EV for 7 years, the first with a range of 70 miles, and have only ever had access to public charging. I therefore am providing evidence from the perspective of residential on –street charge point operator and as an extensive user of on street charging.

Is lamppost charging convenient?

The average driver in the UK drives approximately 6,000 miles per year. The average EV can drive for 4 miles per kWh which means that the average UK driver needs 1,5ookWh per year of charging.  Typically street light chargers charge at above 5kW, meaning that these average drivers would need to charge for 300 hours per year if all there charging was from their local streetlight, less if some charging was at rapid chargers enroute on longer journeys.  The average charge session is about 50kWh, meaning that these drivers need to charge for 10 hours, 30 times per year, about once every 12 days.

Using petrol as an analogy to EV charging is inaccurate. Mobile phone charging is a better comparison.  Most people charge their mobile phones while they sleep and seldomly need to charge away from home.

Are there enough lampposts?

Using the above calculations, the “ideal” streetlight, one that is charging vehicles 24 hours a day, every day, with the next vehicle starting a charge as soon as the previous one finishes, can support 29 vehicles. This theoretical maximum is 100% utilisation and would not exist in reality. A more reasonable high utilisation is 33%, support for up to 10 vehicles, practical when the uptake of EVs reaches above 90% of vehicles.  The UK parc is 32m vehicles, and 40% of drivers do not have off-street parking, meaning 11.5m EVs would need an on-street solution at the 90% EV uptake level. There are estimated to be 7.2 million streetlights in the UK.  These streetlights are mainly on residential streets with a smaller proportion on the strategic road network, in parks and pedestrianised areas, and some on A roads. To support the 40% of drivers in the future with 90% of the parc of EVs would require 1.15m streetlights, fewer if 20% of charging was done enroute, at work and at destination chargers away from home.

Is there enough power?

The usual grid connection to UK households is a 100A single-phase connection.  There is approximately 1 streetlight per 10 houses on a typical terraced street. Each streetlight has a 25A connection. Therefore the streetlight, being used as a charger would draw a maximum of 2.5% of the power available to the houses nearby.  Additionally, using the Open Smart Charging Protocol, the DNO could request a pause in public charging at times of peak residential demand, and charge point operators could encourage demand shifting using tariffs and incentives to move the drivers’ charging away from these short peaks.  This would mean no LV grid reinforcement would be required. Drivers could also be encouraged through dynamic pricing to charge when there is spare capacity being generated by wind or solar power, meaning that the above 33% utilisation would allow some drivers to lower tariffs and reduce demand on the grid.

What is delaying the rollout of on-street residential charge points?

These points are probably well understood by DfT and OZEV. 

  1. Local Authorities are the gatekeepers, and owners of streetlights.  They are naturally cautious about adding additional street furniture and of potentially reducing the life of their streetlights.  They also take a risk averse approach to changes in their enviroments and often choose to consult residents on the placement of each charger. This consultation takes 6 weeks and several days of council officers’ time. This is not an efficient approach for the roll-out of 300,000-600,000 charge points.

Local authorities should not be required to consult on deploying charging infrastructure.

  1. Local Authorities see charge points as a revenue generator like parking.  In reality charge point operators will not see returns on their capital investments for many years.  Additional requirements such as pavement build-outs, dropped curbs for PAS 1899 compliance on every charge point, dual-headed charge points on residential streets, contactless payment devices on low-power charge points, and onerous reporting all add to the capital and operational costs making the margins slimmer and the payback period for the infrastructure very long and in some instances impossible.

Local authorities should limit the revenue they demand from charging to cover their officer time only.  They should maximise the number of chargers rather than excessive and unnecessary features.  The LEVI fund is encouraging this.

There should be a fixed, low cost for the TRO/TMO process to dedicate a bay for EV charging.

  1. Local authorities are delaying their procurements and therefore the infrastructure roll-out. This is exacerbated by delays to the LEVI funding and by the local authorities’ lack of people, time and money to deploy a service that is not one of the statutory services that they are required to provide.

Providing residential, on-street charging should be a statutory service for the local authority, similar to bin collection and road maintenance.

 

January 2025