ubitricity, charging via street light (posts)

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mbender

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 21, 2013
Messages
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Location
The Great California Delta, and environs
I'm not sure I completely understand the "contract" part of this new approach to charging, but I hope the concept (if not ubitricity itself) makes its way to the U.S. It would be a big first step in bringing street-side charging to many "urbanites" and others without designated parking spots &or electric sockets tied to their residence.

Via cleantechnica (via The ECO Report):
Ubitricity Can Cut EV Charging System Costs "90%"
 
many homeless already tap into the street lighting in some cities, other than it being only 110 volt and concerns about power usage there really is no reason this wouldn't be viable with minor modifications to the infrastructure. In the US people don't carry their evse with them, in europe most people do.
 
Many street lighting systems are 240 or 480 volt... A number of people in L.A. have been electrocuted over the years trying to tap in to their systems...

apvbguy said:
many homeless already tap into the street lighting in some cities
 
TomT said:
Many street lighting systems are 240 or 480 volt... A number of people in L.A. have been electrocuted over the years terrifying to tap in to their system...

apvbguy said:
many homeless already tap into the street lighting in some cities
that could be true, but I bet those higher volt ones aren't "regular" street lights. in NYC the common street lights aren't 240, in fact you'll find nema 5-15 outlets in almost every base.
 
In our city, there is very little metering infrastructure in place for street lights. There is a payment agreement between the city and utility based on the number of fixtures and the forecasted dusk to dawn usage on an annual basis.

In addition, there are not separate circuits feeding each fixture / pole, so it wouldn't take too many cars plugging in before the infrastructure would be overloaded...It was never really designed for that purpose...
 
apvbguy said:
TomT said:
Many street lighting systems are 240 or 480 volt... A number of people in L.A. have been electrocuted over the years terrifying to tap in to their system...

apvbguy said:
many homeless already tap into the street lighting in some cities
that could be true, but I bet those higher volt ones aren't "regular" street lights. in NYC the common street lights aren't 240, in fact you'll find nema 5-15 outlets in almost every base.


Most street lights are 240V, because there is a 120V outlet that does not mean it is not 240V, the ones on my small residential street are all 240V. And many, many US drivers carry an EVSE with them.
 
Street lights pull very little compared to even a 120 volt EVSE... A number of vehicles plugged in could very quickly overwhelm the system.

EVDRIVER said:
Most street lights are 240V, because there is a 120V outlet that does not mean it is not 240V, the ones on my small residential street are all 240V. And many, many US drivers carry an EVSE with them.
 
On our campus here this was brought up during one of our EVSE meeting. Our campus head electrician stated two things. One our street lights are indeed 480vac, even if we did a step down transformer, each street light circuit is rated about 4000w above what the street lights actually pull. On the flip side they are currently changing our street lights from 175w low sodium to 110w induction. The 110w induction fixtures are nice and white compared to the sodium and even though have a slightly lower lumen output appear much brighter. Even with the the reduction in overall load it doesn't give us enough room to add EV charging on the street lights with a step down. Maybe one or two 120vac 20 amp outlets per string with a step down. We concluded it would be less expensive to install two level 2 stations with 4 more 120vac spots flanking them.

I suspect this is a similar situation across the US, they would put in the minimum wire to power the street lights and nothing else to save on transformer and wiring cost .
 
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