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JANUARY 2022 LIGHTING JOURNAL
FEEDING CHANGE
Using feeder pillars could be one way for councils to accelerate the rollout of EV charging, as a recent ILP ‘Light, Seen’ event discussed By Nic Paton
T
he imperative for all of us to do our bit – and more – to curb global emissions was, understandably, high on the agenda at November’s COP26 climate change summit. A key element of the drive to ‘net zero’ is taking polluting vehicles off our roads and switching to electric. Yet one of the challenges of encouraging people to make this transition is providing the reassurance that there is adequate electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure to meet demand. Moreover, as Dean Wendelborn of Westminster City Council highlighted in Lighting Journal last summer, even if it were possible to scale up the option of in-column EV charging at pace – which may well be something local and national government has to grapple with in the coming years – there simply aren’t enough appropriate lighting columns on our streets to meet all the capacity demand likely to be needed anyway ( ‘Taking charge’ , July/August 2021, vol 86, no 7). One answer to this capacity conundrum, or perhaps one part of what is likely to be a complex, multi-faceted answer, could be embracing, and rapidly accelerating, EV charging via feeder pillars. All of which made the recent ‘Light,
Seen’ event on feeder pillars and EV charging by Alan Read, national sales manager at Premier member Charles Endirect, all the more topical.
NEED FOR EXPANDED CHARGING INFRASTRUCTURE
Light, Seen, to recap, is the series of online sessions that have been run by the ILP during the pandemic to give ILP Premier members an opportunity to talk about products, projects or industry issues, much as you would once have forged relationships over a coffee on an exhibition stand. The aim has been for Light, Seen
simply to bring together designers, engineers, service providers, manufacturers and specifiers, while also throwing some learning into the mix. Alan opened his presentation by highlighting how the need for enhanced EV charging infrastructure was becoming ever-more pressing. Cities and municipalities are nevertheless responding, for example through ultralow emissions or clean air zones in the likes of London, Birmingham, Bath, Bristol, Oxford and Portsmouth, with more likely to make the switch. The Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV ) also has set out an
