Has anyone gotten a charger installed on street or other 'public' spaces

the_amazing_raisin · 07-08-2020 2:37pm #1

Hi folks, maybe someone can help satisfy my curiosity here.

Once of the main things I've seen about EV ownership is that life is a lot easier with a home charger installed.

This is fairly straightforward if you own a house with a driveway, but for people parking on street or who keep their cars in a car park this poses a lot more problems.

I've heard that it is possible to install a charger in an on-street location, but I'm guessing this would need to be close to your house as you'd be required to run a cable from the house under the pavement to a charger. This presumably getting planning permission from your local council

Also in the case of car parks, I'm assuming you'd need permission from the management company to install the required cabling from the mains connection to your space (assuming it's an allocated space).

I'm wondering has anyone done or tried this? If so, what was your experience, did you manage to get a charger installed or not and what difficulties or pitfalls did you encounter?

Also if anyone has done it and is willing to share how much it costs, I think it'd be useful to know for anyone who's planning an EV purchase

Black_Knight · 07-08-2020 3:37pm

Guillaume has had one installed in his old apartment underground car park. Can't imagine it being trivial to get it done, but I guess until it's the norm there's going to be push back. Assigned parking spaces certainly helps here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqo6S0yheEA

As for streets, i've never heard of anyone getting it installed. Would seem next to impossible to manage IMO.

the_amazing_raisin · 07-08-2020 4:03pm

Yeah the general consensus with on-street chargers seems to be that it's impossible. I checked around the Dublin city website and it seems that the parking permits only allow you to park in an area, they don't allocate you a particular spot. So that would mean you're depending on no-one parking in the spot you've had your charger installed in, which seems pretty risky.

Underground car parks are probably easier in principle, since you don't need to worry about concealing the cables under a pavement, you can install steel ducts or something in the ceiling probably. The cable run could be very long though, which adds to the expense, and again you're dependant on having an allocated spot which isn't always the case

I guess we need the local councils to show some leadership and start electrifying whole streets or install charging hubs. They could cable every space up for chargers and leave it up to the car owner to buy and have on installed. Or they could install chargers and charge for the electricity used, maybe give a discount for permit holders

I remember the episode of Fully Charged where they showed the big charging hub that the council had installed in Dundee, Scotland. It looked like a brilliant resource for residents and would eventually become a source of income for the council. I wish our local governments would show similar levels of forward thinking

unkel · 07-08-2020 9:58pm

Not impossible. This forum's moderator - liamog - has done exactly that. He'll be around shortly to give a summary of what was involved for sure.

Has anyone gotten a charger installed on street or other 'public' spaces

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