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The Hacker News crowd might be interested in how I charge whilst not having off-street parking, in central London. They converted all the street lights to LEDs,
by jasoncartwright 8y ago
The Hacker News crowd might be interested in how I charge whilst not having off-street parking, in central London. They converted all the street lights to LEDs, meaning there is excess electricity delivered. So they put plugs on the posts. Works brilliantly.
https://imgur.com/a/I5AtwJk https://imgur.com/a/I5AtwJk
https://www.ubitricity.com/ https://www.ubitricity.com/
- frosted-flakes 8y agoThat is interesting. How is your usage metered so they know how much to charge you?
- jasoncartwright 8y agoThe box on the proprietary cable reports back via a mobile phone network, and I get a bill each month.
- nikon 8y agohow much do you think it costs to "fill" your Tesla via this provider?
- jasoncartwright 8y agoI pay 0.12GBP per kWh on that cable. Car has a 90kWh battery, so £10.80 fills from 0 to 100. I get 250-350mi from that.
- tschwimmer 8y agoThis is very cool but would get stolen and chopped for copper in US cities. I'd seriously give this 15 minutes before being stolen in SF.
- ip26 8y agoThe yellow part & green box is carried by the driver, typically. The city's end of the deal is just a socket on a lamp post.
- jasoncartwright 8y agoThat picture is from where I live, Brixton in London - not exactly a low crime area. Cable is locked at both ends. I've never tried it, but strikes me you'd have to be particularly stupid to put a cutting implement through a live electricity line.
- olyjohn 8y agoPeople do it all the time... https://duckduckgo.com/?q=live+power+lines+cut+to+steal+copper https://duckduckgo.com/?q=live+power+lines+cut+to+steal+copp...
- nas 8y agoYour explanation doesn't make sense to me. How many watts does a non-LED light consume vs charging an EV? A good sized light is probably less than 500 watts. To charge an EV you need thousands of watts. The street lights must have been wired with a massively over-designed electrical conductor (and upstream infrastructure) or there would be no way to charge EVs in any kind of density. Based on the power draw of EVs, I don't see how it can work without putting in new cabling.
- umeshunni 8y agoYou can charge an EV with 1kW (i.e. 110V x 10A) - that's how I charge my Tesla daily. Given that this is in the UK, they probably have 220V and 13A delivered to each outlet - that's 2.8kW.
- jasoncartwright 8y agoThis. I get more than enough juice out of an Ubitricity socket for an overnight charge. Here is a screenshot of the Tesla app showing the car charging on an Ubitricity plug.... https://imgur.com/a/TykEMSa https://imgur.com/a/TykEMSa Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKaEhBjt1ls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKaEhBjt1ls, from Fully Charged. Video features a council official (who own the lights) and Ubitricity CEO.
- m463 8y agoI would assume several traffic lights compose a string, and not every traffic light has an EV.