DESCRIPTION

Charging your EV at home overnight is an ideal solution. Your car is parked, charged overnight and ready to go at the start of each day. However, not everyone has suitable off-street parking at home that allows them to have a home charger, especially people living in residential or apartment buildings. At the moment the best solution for them is to use the public charging networks. Nevertheless, public charging takes more time (driving to a charging station and charging your EV can take hours) and costs more because of the expensive installation of charging infrastructure.

PROBLEM

Availability and access to the public charging infrastructure in Lithuania is still lacking. Moreover, the public charging infrastructure is taking the fast-charging path (over 50kW power). However, the majority of charging sessions from other country examples take place during the night time and slow charging power is sufficient.

SOLUTION

Lamp-post charging is a great solution that can help to solve these problems. Charging equipment built into the lamp-post utilizes the existing lighting infrastructure, helping to reduce overall installation costs. Moreover, these chargers can be installed on street, giving easy access to overnight charge points for EV owners without private parking spaces next to home. Lamp-post charging not only helps to save consumers time and money but also helps to expand the public charging infrastructure faster and at a lower cost.

STATUS AND PROGRESS

Ignitis Innovation Hub is developing a pilot project to identify the suitability of existing street lighting infrastructure in Lithuanian cities and the right hardware manufacturers. It is expected that such an integrated solution would accelerate the expansion of the public charging infrastructure, bring the installation cost down, improve charge point accessibility and encourage more drivers to choose the e-mobility transport option.

Want to know more? Contact our Innovation expert Gretė Bagdonaitė - [email protected]

Image: Siemens Lamp-post EV Charger