Set the filter to 3-22kW or so, and in Europe at least you will see a lot of on-street chargers. London especially.
In some places they are added to street lights, since those had a thick cable for the old sodium lights but don't need the power any more for LED lighting. In others, it's a new post between two parking spaces.
There's a decently high current power line available from street lights. Not sure if they're still putting them in with high current since so many are converting to LED, but sodium lights drew ~1kW iirc.
You're right, I've done a bit more research into this. The company in question (Ubitricity) are uprating lampposts to 25A single phase at 240V, so 6 kW per post. Even though sodium (and earlier flourescent) lighting never used anything like that much current, I can't find a source to confirm whether or not the lampposts were originally rated at 25A or lower.
On your calculations of how many cars can charge at once, I would keep it simpler and say that a row of parallel parking typical in UK cities, there is one street lamp for every 5 cars. 50 kWh charge overnight, approx 300 km range for every fifth car.
Supposing 100% EV adoption - well, already not everyone drives themselves to work/kids to school in UK cities (where most on-street parking takes place) - but if they do, and have charging at work plus some nearby rapid charging, that should do the trick, assuming a typical commute by road isn't more than 50 km each way. It's certainly in the ballpark.
It's at least fairly cheap to install a standard industrial outlet (single phase, or three phase if the house supply has it -- this varies in Europe). That looks to be what older/cheaper street lamp installations have -- a domestic outlet isn't appropriate for outdoor use anyway.
> If you have a standard domestic single phase (230V) supply, you won't be able to achieve a charging rate of more than 7.4kW. Even with a standard commercial 3 phase connection, the power rating for AC charging is limited to 22kW.
22kW is plenty, and e.g. my apartment in Denmark has a three-phase 40A supply, so houses surely have more than this.
Do you have a reference for this because it seems unlikely to be true. The difference in wiring guage between a 100w light and a 3kw is very significant.
Edit: this article talks about one street in London being the first to have car chargers built in an is from March this year.
> I am not talking about 4 lane motorways, where access to megawatt power lines might not be that challenging, but more remote areas
That's a good use case for battery backed or battery integrated chargers. They can charge up the battery on a smaller grid connection but still deliver fast charging since you're drawing from the battery pack.
> Every petrol station has an electric connection.
It's not as simple as using what's there. For fast chargers you also need to install a high power grid connection.
However, battery based chargers are an interesting option for low installation costs without a high power connection while still achieving 120+ kW charging. The battery can either be integrated into the charger unit itself for the lowest installation cost or a large battery pack can be placed on site to run the chargers off:
Is this map [1] up-to-date? It shows some 150kW+ chargers in both Europe and North America, but I expected a lot more (given your claim).
It's probably also relevant that the usual mains sockets in a European house can provide around 3kW, around double the US. Installing a new circuit (with thicker wiring) increases that to around 7kW at a fairly low expense. That makes it much easier to charge at home (spend €150 to have the extra circuit installed), or when visiting a house/office (use the nearest normal socket).
There's urban chargers at 72kw and highway superchargers at 150-250kw max charging rate. The urban ones are often at major shopping destinations in high traffic areas.
In Europe we also have 230V power as standard, so the standard 32A EV wall chargers provide 7kW - more than enough to charge any EV overnight. Even a standard UK wall socket can provide about 3kW.
In Germany they have 3-phase wiring right into homes, so even faster home charging is possible there.
> Charging speed is now mostly limited by public charger speed and good enough.
Not sure where this is the case. Here, the 250kw chargers are plentiful, but cars average closer to 120kw because of the charge curve. We're still battery limited most of the time.
Was having this conversation with a neighbour the other day.
I have a 7kw charger at my house, but the loop for our street is 21kw, which is typical here. It’s going to be a big problem to solve when it comes to it.
I wouldn’t mind if I had to charge at 3.3kw, but if every car is an EV the current grid just isn’t going to be able to carry enough juice.
Britain (especially London) has more kerbside EV charging (per capita) than anywhere except China. It's often only 3000W or so, i.e. the rating of the normal domestic socket.
What EVs would they be. At least in Europe all new EVs use CCS and most of the older ones used Type-2. They can all be charged from an ordinary 230 V, 10 A domestic supply; Schuko in Europe or BS1363 in the UK (and Ireland?).
I thought it was odd that you claimed those chargers are rare, turns out they are - in the US.
According to [0], there are only a few 350kW chargers in the US, mostly in the Northeast. If you look at the same map in Europe, they're pretty common on long-distance travel routes.
I wonder why this is? Is it related to US electrical infrastructure? I know in much of Europe it's common to have 3-phase electricity at home, for example.
Set the filter to 3-22kW or so, and in Europe at least you will see a lot of on-street chargers. London especially.
In some places they are added to street lights, since those had a thick cable for the old sodium lights but don't need the power any more for LED lighting. In others, it's a new post between two parking spaces.
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