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Comment by jasoncartwright | Hacker News Reader

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://www.ubitricity.com/

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Your 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.

You 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.

This. 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

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKaEhBjt1ls, from Fully Charged. Video features a council official (who own the lights) and Ubitricity CEO.

I would assume several traffic lights compose a string, and not every traffic light has an EV.

This 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.

The 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.

That 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.

People do it all the time...

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=live+power+lines+cut+to+steal+copp...

That is interesting. How is your usage metered so they know how much to charge you?

The box on the proprietary cable reports back via a mobile phone network, and I get a bill each month.

how much do you think it costs to "fill" your Tesla via this provider?

I 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.

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