Analysis: Around 30% of Irish households don’t have easy access to private home charging, with policy and regulatory gaps hindering progress
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On February 28th, Irish motorists were once again reminded of the strong link between fossil fuels and war. In the weeks following the US and Israeli attack on Iran, the international price of oil doubled, then oscillated as the events of the war lurched from talks of peace to threats of civilisational erasure. On Irish forecourts, petrol and diesel prices surged. Strenuous policy efforts by the Irish Government managed to soften but not reverse the price increases. For many car-reliant households and businesses this has meant significant economic pain.
But car dependency doesn’t have to mean fossil fuel dependency. Locally generated renewable electricity can power locally charged electric cars. Unsurprisingly, since the US-Israeli-Iran war started, public interest in buying EVs has also rocketed. If you own your own home and have off-street parking, getting a home charger for an EV is relatively straightforward. Approximately 80% of people who already have an EV charge at home.
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From RTÉ Radio 1’s Morning Ireland, Irish Independent technology editor Adrian Weckler on limitations for public EV chargers and increasing charging prices
But approximately 30% of Irish households don’t have easy access to private home charging. They live in terraced houses, apartments or semi-detached houses without (or with limited) driveways. Without private charging, they will be reliant on public EV charging and Ireland has one of the lowest rates of public EV charging in the EU. While this might be related to Ireland having the highest share of houses versus apartments in the EU, there are many people struggling to access either public or private EV charging.
Fortunately there are technical solutions for private on-street EV charging, though policy and regulatory gaps are hindering progress. Three possible approaches are a gully in the pavement for a charging cable, an overhead charging arm, or a charging pavement.
The pavement gully is a narrow-protected crossing for a charging cable across a pavement without it being a trip hazard. It has been successfully used in Northern Ireland and Great Britain (including in a London borough). However, in Ireland changes to the private wires legislation are needed to cover the use of private electricity wires in public places, i.e. across a pavement.
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From RTÉ Brainstorm, how do EVs perform in the real world? Here’s what one Cork driver discovered
The necessary amendments are expected later this year but, even once passed, additional supporting regulations and standards will be required to fully facilitate gully charger cables. Many new housing estates in Ireland already have gullies built into the pavement, ready and waiting for charging EVs.
A second solution is the overhead charging arm. Unfortunately this solution is also experiencing policy ‘commitment issues’. While some enterprising citizens keen to go electric have installed their own charging arms, many councils such as Dublin City Council deem them to be a permanent structure thus requiring planning permission (or retention if built without planning permission). However, it isn’t clear at present if local authorities will actually grant planning permission. Some Government TDs have called for charging arms to be exempt from planning rules.
A third solution is the charging pavement where a curb stone is replaced with a charging socket which makes use of existing utility wiring channels. It’s an elegant solution that has been successfully trialled in Germany. While trials have been planned for Dublin, the technology is likely to fall foul of the same policy hurdles as the pavement gully and charging arm.
From RTÉ News, ‘savings are huge’ for EV owners who have installed home charging channel
For apartments, the challenges and solutions are somewhat different. For a start, car parking spaces can be either reserved or shared. Then building management companies and/or committees will need to review and approve any installation. A request by one person to install an EV charge point might not be considered as favourably as a similar request by ten residents, since bulk upgrades will be more economical than a series of one-off changes.
Furthermore, any increases in the electrical load of the building will need to be within the maximum capacity of the local electricity network, the MIC (Maximum Import Capacity). A bank of EV chargers might breach the local MIC limit, though installing battery storage and solar panels could help prevent the need for an (expensive) MIC upgrade. SEAI currently run a scheme to support the cost of bulk installation of EV chargers in apartments. For local authorities and approved housing bodies, it covers 90% of total costs or 60% for owner-managed estates and commercial build-to-rent.
While community charging hubs could overcome limited access to private charging, the price benefits of driving an electric car primarily come from being able to charge at home at night. Home charging is usually one-third of the cost of public charging, which is roughly equivalent to petrol and diesel prices at the pump.
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From RTÉ Archives, Paul Cunningham reports for RTÉ News on the introduction of on-street charging stations for electric vehicles in Dublin in 2010. Energy Minister Eamon Ryan said “it’s going to be in everyone’s home in a number of years.”
The transition of Ireland’s car fleet from fossil fuels to electricity is part of the transition of Ireland’s entire energy system (electricity, heat and transport) to a more renewable and sustainable energy system. But energy transitions aren’t just changes in fuels. They also involve changes in infrastructure, economics, user practices, government policy, local regulations, institutional capacity, professional knowledge and routines.
When changes in technology, user behaviour and policy all happen together, positive feedback loops can lead to accelerated system change; the energy transition could be quick. However, if one area is out of sync with another, the pace of change can slow or stall.
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From RTÉ Radio 1’s Today with David McCullagh, some on-street charging for EVs to be as expensive as traditional fuel
The challenge for Ireland is to get all parts of the energy eco-system working together as smoothly as possible so that the energy transition can happen as quickly as possible, thus freeing us from being tied to the whim of every autocrat who decides to start a war in a region and a world dependent on fossil fuels.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ