The brightest lamp in the street

As thoughts turn to getting packed up and ready for any bank holiday weekend trips, I want to toot my horn to one of the great everyday innovations of the last decade or so.

LED streetlights didn’t just mean lower lecky bills for the council and less time and hassle changing bulbs. It also freed up power to solve another big, green problem. With EV sales slowing, how do we encourage drivers to buy or lease electric vehicles when there’s so little off-street parking in cities like London?

The answer wasn’t glaringly obvious. It was gently shining down on every eco engineer, environmental expert and their dog, on evening walks.?

By working with councils to safely share power from existing lampposts, energy providers like Ubitricty, and Char.gy and City EV allow EV drivers to charge up faster than a standard home three pin plug. Though you can get enhanced home charge points from energy suppliers like Octopus, if a driveway is how you’re lucky enough to roll.

With a more than twice the price daytime Char.gy tariff that runs from 7am until midnight, the convenience comes at a price. But it beats driving out to a faster but expensive and still not ubiquitous enough petrol station supercharger. And you won’t find me running one of those mains trip wires across the pavement. I even saw one looped up over a tree recently.

You can request a lamppost point near your home from Ubitricity. Char.gy invite you to take it up with your local council, as I did. Southwark installed the capital’s first EV street light charger back in 2018. And when I asked, it only took a few weeks for them to hook this one up right opposite me.

I suppose my neighbour and I will be competing head-to-head for it, until the next generation of dual connection lamppost chargers arrives.