No off-street parking? No problem: Street lights being fitted with EV chargers

Street lights being fitted with EV chargers, with a raft of new smart lights being installed across Sydney, allowing off-street EV charging for electric vehicles, as well as WiFi hotspots and security cameras.

The poles – built by “smart city enabler” ENE.HUB – remain mostly on a trial roll-out basis, but have begun appearing everywhere from the Canada Bay Council area to Blacktown and the Domain in the CBD.

The idea is simple: to provide EV charging possibilities for electric vehicle owners without off-street parking, as well as acting as convenience top-up chargers for those who do. 

But the solution isn’t cheap. The poles are designed and built by ENE.HUB, with charging infrastructure experts JetCharge stepping up with the charging capability, and each is estimated to cost around $300K.

But they do aim to answer the single biggest drawback to EV ownership, especially if you don’t have off-street parking – finding somewhere to charge. Street lights being fitted with EV chargers solves that.

Each pole will deliver a 7kW charge to your EV, so in a vehicle like Hyundai’s Kona Electric, that should be enough to deliver a full charge in around seven hours, or three times faster than using your mains power at home.