Category Archives: Char.gy

On-street charging gets £37m boost from Government

July 23, 2019Char.gy, Charging, Electric Cars, News, Reviews and CommentRepost

Department for Transport announces funding for 12 projects to help drivers charge on streets

The Government is to invest £37 million in a series of schemes designed to help drivers with no off-street parking charge their electric vehicles.

It’s thought that up to 45% of people in the UK don’t have access to their own driveway or private parking, but 90% of ‘charging events’ are estimated to take place at home.

Meanwhile, only households with private parking currently qualify for the Office for Low Emissions Vehicles’ wallbox grant, which contributes up to £500 towards the total cost of installation.

Slow Charging the ZOE at Highgate (Image: T. Larkum)

A dozen projects will share the £37 million fund, with each having passed a three-month feasibility study as part of the Government’s Future of Mobility Grand Challenge.

Char.gy – which opened the first lamp post chargers in London last year – has been given £2.3 million to develop wireless chargers for residential streets.

Consultants Urban Foresight secured £3 million to deploy pop-up chargers that rise up from the kerbside, a project that’ll see Virgin Media helping to monitor usage.

Other projects include the installation of multiple chargers in car parks in order to enable “mass charging” of electric cars at night, while “solar forecourts” – which use solar panels to power charging facilities – will also benefit from funding.

£37 million in government funding earmarked for EV charging innovation

July 21, 2019Char.gy, Charging, Electric CarsRepost

Twelve electric vehicle (EV) charging projects, including wireless charging and solar powered forecourts, are set to receive a share of government funding totalling £37 million.

Over £2.3 million has been awarded to Char.gy for the development and deployment of wireless charging on residential streets in Milton Keynes, the London Borough of Redbridge and Buckinghamshire County.

The project is in collaboration with the Open University and The University of Warwick’s Warwick Manufacturing Group. Char.gy has previously worked with Southwark Council to install a network of 50 lamppost chargers.

Richard Stobart, Char.gy CEO, said the company is “excited” to help accelerate the uptake of EVs through its ability to retrofit to existing vehicles and enable several parking bays per lamp column “without the need for cables”.

Over £3 million has been awarded to a project for the roll out of ‘pop up’ chargers built into pavements in Plymouth and Dundee, with the aim to provide a solution for drivers without access to off-street parking. Urban Electric, along with partners Urban Foresight, Co-wheels, Duku and Appy parking, is to conduct the project.

Southwark Council begins roll out of lamppost electric vehicle charging

November 9, 2018Char.gy, Charging, Electric Cars, News, Reviews and CommentRepost

Southwark Council is launching a network of 50 lamppost electric vehicle charge points after partnering with char.gy to deliver installations in two areas of the borough.

Two chargers are already live, with plans to roll out the rest of the network across Borough & Bankside and Dulwich by the end of January.

Char.gy designs and manufactures the units, which are rated at 7.7kW charging speed. However, due to the availability of power from the lampposts, these are reduced to around 5.3kW in most instances.

Lamp post charging has become an area of interest for local authorities, particularly those in London, as they offer a solution to residents without off street parking without adding to existing street furniture.

In addition, char.gy can offer load management across multiple chargers, queuing or delaying charging periods or reducing speeds at times of grid constraint.

Richard Stobart, chief executive of char.gy, said: “Char.gy offers easy, affordable, open-access EV charging without the need to dig-up residential streets across Southwark to lay additional cables or add on-street electricity cabinets. We look forward to offering this convenient means of on-street charging as a vital step towards reducing vehicle emissions across London.”

Char.gy taps into lampposts to charge your electric car

April 24, 2017Char.gy, Charging, Electric CarsJo

If you have a garage with a power socket, an electric car makes an awful lot of sense. If you park on the street, however, the infrastructural challenge of keeping your electron-powered vehicle topped up becomes complicated enough that perhaps sticking to driving on squished dinosaurs makes sense for a while longer. Until Char.gy comes along, that is.

“Seventy-two percent of drivers in London don’t have off-street parking,” says Richard Stobart, CEO of the London-based Char.gy. “If you want an electric car, not being able to charge at home is a major disincentive.”

So, in a world where people want to drive electric cars, cities are trying to clean up the air and car makers want to sell electric cars, how do you take on the not insignificant challenge of charging car batteries in a dense and fast-moving city such as London? You tap into other, already existing infrastructure, of course.

“People want to charge their cars while they are doing something else, preferably when they are parked at home and asleep in their beds,”

Stobart points out, and offers a solution. The company has developed charge points that connect to the existing street furniture: Lampposts. Makes sense: The cables are already there, the local government owns them, and once you’ve gone that far, you may as well make the next couple of logical steps

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