The city of Los Angeles has been making it easier for EV drivers to find a charger by taking advantage of its streetlight poles. The necessary electric infrastructure is already in place and the Los Angeles Bureau of Street Lighting has been tasked by the mayor’s office to install 10,000 EV chargers on the poles while replacing existing bulbs with energy-efficient ones.

The city has already installed over 750 chargers and the Bureau of Street Lighting is now expanding the effort with a project that will use technology from AmpUp, a charging software provider that specializes in shared charging networks, and EVSE, a provider of retractable-cable EV charging stations. Thanks to the ongoing project, the City of Angels now ranks third in the US with an average of one charger for every 724 residents, after California’s Bay Area and San Diego.

The Bureau of Street Lighting oversees a fairly complex lighting infrastructure that includes over 220,000 light poles. Because the switch to more energy-efficient LED bulbs reduces each street light’s demand for electricity, it frees up capacity for other uses, including EV charging. The new chargers bolt right into the existing street light infrastructure’s 240 V electrical service.

The chargers, AmpUp said, are installed 10 feet (3.05 m) above grade, reducing their exposure to vandalism, vehicular damage, tripping hazards and cable damage. Each charger’s 25-foot (7.6 m) cable descends upon activation and retracts when the driver unplugs it from the vehicle.

The streetlight pole-mounted EV chargers are an ideal solution for inner-city environments where space is at a premium.

“Pole-mounted chargers make EV charging more accessible to a broader population, including those living in multi-unit dwellings or areas where traditional charging stations are scarce,” said Dean Spacht, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at EVSE.

Source: AmpUp