Featured " BeamSpot" Recharging Station

It doesn't say NO permits. It says no complex permitting. If it is solar (or wind) and is connected to the grid it requires a permit because the utility has to insure that it automatically disconnects from the grid when power is out.
I doubt many downtown city areas are going to want the wind turbines.

Mike

 

I guess there's something good about this, but electric power at night is not the problem in california.

 

they look pretty cool, very futuristic!
i wonder what the ROI is?

 

It's got to be pretty distant considering how expensive juice is in california.
Why in the world they don't consider cheaper rates in off-hours, is a complete mystery.
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IMHO: pie in the sky gimmicky, fluff piece. Their investors should watch-out!! The article is full of flaws and seems to think that they can use existing lamp post to just hang EV chargers on them. Good idea, but the lamp wiring is too small to carry any substantial current to charge an EV in a reasonable amount of time. Street lamps are usually wired in series and blocks; all that wiring needs to be replaced. As for the wind, solar, and battery backup lamp - that should work, but the pushing power back into the grid requires rewiring, cut-off relays and switches. Even if the solar array & wind turbine is at optimal conditions and max generating capacity, it isn't going to charge an EV in a timely manner. Current technology doesn't support that. I suppose that if your only charging ONE EV using an array of street lamps, It may work - but your just adding a single car charging station at what cost? How many street lamps will it take to do that and would it be cheaper to install a transformer and a real charging station?

In new construction, all that can be baked into the cost and engineering, but existing infrastructure - good luck..... In addition to new construction, there are much cheaper, old tech and build options - no learning curve.

Depending on the price premium that company is going to charge for their "technology", It may be cheaper to build a shaded parking structure out of a combination of wind, solar, and battery backup, from scratch. The vertical wind turbines would only be an eyesore from a distance as they can be placed away from the edges of the structure. The added transformers will ensure speedy charging of EVs; without degradation of the system when multiple cars are charging at the same time.

Just my 2 cents....

 

There are already lamp post EV chargers available; mostly in Europe. They do work.
This lamppost EV charger just went commercial in the US | Electrek
ubitricity | turning lampposts into EV charge points

The wind and solar power is the novel part. Having those back feed into the grid might make the install more complex. Then NJ has many solar panels installed on utility poles, so maybe not. Or they could simply not be feeding back to the grid,and just have the generators charging the battery.

 

My point is that lamp post are wired with AWG 12 or 14, depending on how many lamp post is on a circuit along with the properly sized conduits. All that needs to be ripped out and replaced with appropriate wires and conduit. We don't have wireless extension cords yet, inside joke our shop uses when the fire marshal wants us to unplug things. I'm not saying it can't be done, but that's a huge cost. Replacing the conduit for the appropriate sized wire, plus distance and transformers spacing in-between to prevent current drops when all lamp post are plugged in, within that chain. That's were it get expensive. As bisco stated what's the ROI.
It's just like wanting to replace your gas range with an induction cook top. What's the max amps your house box is set-up for. Most houses built 20 years ago is around 100A. A lot of older houses are much lower. So you install 50A charger for your EV, how are you going to power that new induction range (legally)? I'm still leaving out other major current draw sources. ie. heat pump, water heater, AC unit to name a few. Point is cost increase exponentially the more points that are missed in the planning stages. This example is just one isolated house, what happens when we're talking about scaling up several square miles of lamp post?
That has happened a few times in my facility. Someone didn't follow procedures and purchased something that our infrastructure won't support, without major retrofits to the facility. Three years later, after retrofits, it's installed and doesn't work - unit is out of warranty and calling around to other facilities, we find out it never worked as advertised and everyone just went back to the tired and true method of doing things. At that point, the department head that made the decision is asked to leave, but wasted millions in the process over a 4 year period. Great Job, if you can BS you way into it.....

 

That may be the wiring in the light fixture, but the run lengths for street lights are going need much heavier gauge for between them. Even under the low chance that wiring for the old HID lamps was pulled out with a switch to LED, the conduit was not. Then these light circuits are usually 208 Volts, could be higher. Which is enough to get Level 2 AC, which is all these chargers are aiming for.

They aren't intended to be fast chargers. Just slower destination chargers at businesses, or over night charging in residential areas for those without home charging. We are going to need those. Higher charger density will require upgrading the wiring. Lamp post ones may be able to use the existing conduits, or you dig a separate circuit for stand alone chargers.

 

When I got solar the code required an automatic cutoff as well as a well marked manual cutoff switch from the grid.
So I'd like to see how they interconnect the power from multiple poles into one charger...if they do this.

Mike

 

Our old community had a few light poles that had 120 V plugs at the base. The plugs were designed to only be used for very very light duty, & short duration & only during the daytime. iow, the circuits were installed with capacity strictly designed for the amount of draw for the light bulbs at night, or very very light duty in the daytime. If you dare tried to charge on these light poles during night time current use, you would blow the circuit Within 30 seconds. (i tried - after checking circuitry & verifying that it would reset - & it did)
One would imagine that most nighttime light bulb circuitry is designed the same way?
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It would be one panel and charger to a pole.

Depends on location, code, age of installation, etc. Up north, such outlets are for engine heaters, so are wired for for extended use of high wattage appliances during the night. Cities and towns that have had street lamps for some time will have wiring for the old, inefficient bulbs of the past.

 

But if the street lights are currently wired with more than one pole to a circuit you are wiring multiple energy sources into a single circuit that have to be synced to the grid (and disconnected on grid outage. So this makes the whole thing a bit more complex, IMO.

Mike

 

My point exactly! The devil is in the details. On the surface, it seems like a common sense approach - but when you dive into the details and start laying everything out on a spreadsheet, cost gets out of hand very quickly.
That's why the company's sales team will always steer the conservation away from ROI or produce a highly deceptive documentation, that's only a few years old, with really low-ball numbers. I've seen both in the real world and been dropped-off invites of future meetings, on the same subject. That's my reward for making a salesman squirm. I usually hold onto those meeting minutes, because a few years down the road - I'll be dragged into a meeting of why this project is over budget and months, if not years late, because someone missed something major. That's when I point out that I raised the red flags way before we bought the steaming pile of manure and how much it's going to cost to rectify the issues. This isn't coming out of my budget, because you were warned that the numbers presented, didn't make sense. Your department is going to have to ask finance for the additional funds to complete that project.

 

When it's completely discharged, MY "modern car" charges from a 220V circuit in only a couple hours. When used for normal purposes (around town driving, less than a few miles a day) it recharges in even less time.

How much energy is YOUR modern car using on a normal day?

 

Why would they need to be synced? Can't the individual units be their own circuit branching off the light circuit? Like a giant emergency flashlight that plugs into an outlet.

 

I don't know for sure but I think it is against the code for how solar must be installed and able to to disconnected and visually obvious to a utility worker that they have mechanically disconnected it, as required.
Maybe municipal lighting has a different code that would allow this.

Mike

 

That could all be part of the solar/charger/light unit. I don't see why they couldn't be set up as stand alone units vs. as a conjoined array. The former is better to do for ease of install.

 

It appears to me that the beamspot is NOT made for recharging large traction batteries after (or before) long trips. It appears better suited to make up for the energy used when you travel around town and use relatively small amounts of power. You can charge a lot of cars a little at a time from a large number of pole mounted level 1 charges. At any particular point in time you only really need enough energy to get to the next charging point