I live in London, park on the street, so i can't............

I live in London, park on the street, so i can't............

Author
Discussion

anonymous-user

Original Poster:

67 months

Friday 10th February 2017
quotequote all
.... charge my EV.


Well, guess what, looks like you can:




The future is here, today ;-)

Swampy1982

3,362 posts

124 months

Friday 10th February 2017
quotequote all
Simple and brilliant...

Shame I live in Peterborough which is about 26 years behind london technology. Still waiting for reliable 4G signals!

anonymous-user

Original Poster:

67 months

Friday 10th February 2017
quotequote all
Swampy1982 said:
Shame I live in Peterborough
You mean Peter-bog-horror ;-)

modeller

493 posts

179 months

Friday 10th February 2017
quotequote all
Max_Torque said:
The future is here, today ;-)
Which network?

aporschefan

302 posts

254 months

Sunday 12th February 2017
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Out of interest, if someone was to trip over the cable, who is at fault? (I think the idiot who trips over the cable but common sense and the litigious world we live in are two very different things.)


gangzoom

7,190 posts

228 months

Sunday 12th February 2017
quotequote all
Great post OP, been waiting to see this in action, not that hard to sort out public charging given in any major city there are power lines everywhere.

Some one will be along soon to come out with some rubbish about how we now need 20 nuclear power stations to charge EVs wink

Magic919

14,126 posts

214 months

Sunday 12th February 2017
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Something for the dogs to wee on.

PixelpeepS3

8,600 posts

155 months

Sunday 12th February 2017
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i guess it depends greatly on the area but i just picture getting up in the morning to find

a) my car was not charged
b) i can't find the charging cable i plugged in the night before
c) later in the day i notice a bright yellow cable dangling from a telegraph pole at the end of the road.

Hub

6,744 posts

211 months

Sunday 12th February 2017
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Do the cables lock onto the car/post? How easy is it for some little rascal to come along and unplug it?

amstrange1

611 posts

189 months

Sunday 12th February 2017
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hab1966

1,111 posts

225 months

Sunday 12th February 2017
quotequote all
I think the unit in the picture might be from Ubitricty . There also appears to be a box/controller in the lead.

The Ubitricity unit allows a max 20A to be pulled. I cant see there being the overhead in the existing street lighting cable infrastructure to allow many extra 20A loads to be attached. So it will probably come down to 1 in every 'x' posts to be enabled.

However, how many posts are at kerb side? I've just looked at a number of streets near me and the posts are no where near the kerb edge.

I also (regrettably) look forward to the first claim from somebody falling over such a cable and injuring themselves.



AW10

4,532 posts

262 months

Sunday 12th February 2017
quotequote all
An article in the Time son Saturday suggested that if all vehicles in London were EVs they would need 5 times as much power as the London Underground system. Extrapolated on a national basis this would mean the equivalent of 20 new nuclear plants. A massive grid upgrade would be needed as well.

Petrol and diseasel will be around for a while yet.

anonymous-user

Original Poster:

67 months

Sunday 12th February 2017
quotequote all
AW10 said:
An article in the Time son Saturday suggested that if all vehicles in London were EVs they would need 5 times as much power as the London Underground system. Extrapolated on a national basis this would mean the equivalent of 20 new nuclear plants. A massive grid upgrade would be needed as well.

Petrol and diseasel will be around for a while yet.
er, the Underground stops a bit after midnight you know........ and doesn't start till about 5.30 am, so there's at least 5 hours when all of london's EVs can use it's power.........

(and of course, few of those EVs will actually be completely flat, what with the average speed in london being about 7mph, meaning you'd have to be driving for about 10 hours a day to flat even a 1st gen EV)

Phunk

2,044 posts

184 months

Sunday 12th February 2017
quotequote all
AW10 said:
An article in the Time son Saturday suggested that if all vehicles in London were EVs they would need 5 times as much power as the London Underground system. Extrapolated on a national basis this would mean the equivalent of 20 new nuclear plants. A massive grid upgrade would be needed as well.

Petrol and diseasel will be around for a while yet.
That's assuming that all EV's will need charged every day at the same time as the tube station runs?

In reality it's once or twice a week, at night when there is plenty of spare capacity on the grid.

Infact, they actually can help the grid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid


Anyway, it's a great idea being able to charge from lamp posts, except that 99% of lamp posts in my area are not next to the kerb so you'd need to drag a cable across it. rolleyes

Captain Answer

1,361 posts

200 months

Monday 13th February 2017
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That looks awesome, could see a lot of potential in something like that! How's it work in terms of paying etc or is it free? Did you worry about your cable going walkies?

Clem2k3

129 posts

119 months

Monday 13th February 2017
quotequote all
AW10 said:
An article in the Time son Saturday suggested that if all vehicles in London were EVs they would need 5 times as much power as the London Underground system. Extrapolated on a national basis this would mean the equivalent of 20 new nuclear plants. A massive grid upgrade would be needed as well.

Petrol and diseasel will be around for a while yet.
That article is MILES out. Someone did the maths on SpeakEV but if we built new power stations for EVs then we would need about 3 Hinkleys across the UK. That ignores the fact that we wont need to build new stations for some time yet, because we have loads of excess capacity at night, which is exactly when people will charge their cars.

Lamppost charging looks to be a nice idea, some minor kinks to sort: Capacity can be sorted by switching to LED, Trip hazard might be trickier to sort and Vandalism is a risk no matter what you do ... there's always a git who wants to ruin somebodies day...

MarshPhantom

9,658 posts

150 months

Thursday 16th February 2017
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180 charging points across a city with not far off 10m inhabitants. Great news.

rampageturke

2,623 posts

175 months

Thursday 16th February 2017
quotequote all
Max_Torque said:
.... charge my EV.


Well, guess what, looks like you can:




The future is here, today ;-)
Wow, perfect, a few streets in the biggest city will now have charging points. Future.

TooLateForAName

4,880 posts

197 months

Thursday 16th February 2017
quotequote all
AW10 said:
An article in the Time son Saturday suggested that if all vehicles in London were EVs they would need 5 times as much power as the London Underground system. Extrapolated on a national basis this would mean the equivalent of 20 new nuclear plants. A massive grid upgrade would be needed as well.

Petrol and diseasel will be around for a while yet.
See the correction in the paper admitting that they didnt have a clue about power, energy or maths and that the entire article was bks.

Sheepshanks

36,554 posts

132 months

Thursday 16th February 2017
quotequote all
hab1966 said:
I cant see there being the overhead in the existing street lighting cable infrastructure to allow many extra 20A loads to be attached.
Is there a "street lighting cable infrastructure"? In built-up areas I thought they were just connected to the mains at the nearest convenient point.