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It's interesting how this sounds like a cutting edge experiment, while this is a common thing to see in Germany and other European states for quite a while now.

Robert Llewellyn (previously of Red Dwarf fame) covered this idea eight years ago (July 2017) on his 'electrify' channel:

> The simple and very commonplace lamp post will soon become a ubiquitous charge point for electric cars. They charge at about 5 kW, or 16 amps, not super fast but overnight charging is all most drivers need. Ubitricity is a German based company who've come up with a simple, cheap to install and well managed system for more people on more streets to adopt electric cars.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKaEhBjt1ls

See also pop-up chargers from six years ago:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frkw6aurVUY

Do these chargers require payment for the charge?

What prevents "squatting" at a post (either with an EV or an ICE)?

Just thinking of my neighborhood (THs, not flats, but still no dedicated parking), there's a lamp every 4th or 5th home, and most households have ~2 cars. People mostly park in front of their house today - if you have an ICE, but also a lamppost, it's a negative - you no longer get use of the closest space (or, you take the EV spot from an EV).

The neighborhood solved this by allowing a charge cable to the spot closest to your house. But, that's expensive to install, so not many have done so (electrical panel on back of house, parking on front, so interior cable pull through finished space of home, charge unit on front exterior wall, then conduit through yard and public sidewalk for the cable run to parking). Of course, this doesn't help with apartment parking or true public street side parking (our neighborhood own the parking lot as a shared amenity).

In a documentary about a homeless encampment (in america) I viewed not long ago, the residents had spliced into a lamp post to provide power to their and their neighbours tents. It was truly a hacker inspired, move fast and break things approach.

This research seems to be inspired by the same content and appears to be an attempt to commercialise the same technology.

The paper is here, but unfortunately this government funded research is not open access.

https://doi.org/10.1061/JUPDDM.UPENG-5865

I've been using these in London for at least eight years. Strange to see it written up as a test here.

It seems to me that it might make sense to have every parking meter have an EV charging capability. Granted, parking meter posts aren't generally wired for power, but many places have them for parking places. Could also put a security camera in each one.

That was the first product released >10 years ago at my previous job [1]. The idea did not quite catch on, though, and the product was repurposed (successfully) as an OEM charger. There is not a lot of power available on street lamps and charging at 3.6kW is kind of slow. Consider that with almost the same hardware (especially the same expensive parts) and three-phase current, 22kW are possible.

It might turn out differently in the US, but it is hardly a new idea.

[1] https://www.bender.de/ebee/berlin/

Interesting, but my immediate question is - streetlights draw much less power than a streetlight. So if several chargers in a street are to be used , how is overloading the street light circuit managed?

Maybe the available power for the circuit is equally divided between all the active chargers in the street. OR maybe only one charger allowed ?

This question seems not answered in the articale....

ive always wondered why, in "day stay" car parks (commuters etc) they dont have 6 to 8 cables from a charging point that can all connect to different cars and then do round robin charging. This solves the problem of one person being connected all day and preventing others from benefitting. This way a number of cars can be charged up without the inconvenience of just one person being constantly connected. We have chargers at work where this solution would prevent all the car shuffling and aggro associated with people managing access. in our case 3 cars could charge in a day, so 3 cables available to three spaces and charging done round robin. Probably not a novel idea but one id like to see implemented

Presumably most US street lamps are 120V which is probably why we see this idea implemented in other countries that have 220V power everywhere.

Also worth noting that many towns in the US don't have street lamps or only have them in the CBD.

Just what I know about the majority of America, this seems like a terrible idea. Most downtown areas in America are pretty empty. This includes Kansas City. There are pockets but it’s not like a uk city where you have the style of small connected labor camp homes and it’s the norm to park on the street. I would much rather see multi unit buildings install these.

I've seen a few times people using the weather-guarded 120 VAC outlets (provisioned for power tools) on lamp posts at institutions to steal a bit of charge.

Local scrap yards will now have a ton of copper wire AND charger handles