This academic year IntelliCasa had the pleasure to take part as an industry advisor with City University of London, MSc Internet of things with Entrepreneurship students on Smart Lampposts project. The idea of Smart lampposts was first proposed to the university by IntelliCasa's directors Elie Kfoury & Konstantinos Karagiannis and was selected among other research topics.
Students have spent the last 6 months on research on for designing the most innovative lamppost with Electric Vehicle Charging (EVC) capabilities benefiting from IoT technology. It is to be said that this is the next wave for EVCs on the blooming EV market.
Due to the recent government mandate, which enforces the complete ban of sales for petrol and diesel vehicles by the year as soon as 2030 (Hughes, 2018), there is now a massive awareness for Plug-Ins and EV’s. This trend can be seen not only across the UK and Europe but all around the globe.
In the UK public charging infrastructure has been evolving quickly, but not at the same rate as the growing EV stock. The importance of having this infrastructure in place cannot be over‐emphasised. In the UK, infrastructure is growing at 44% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) with over 12,000 total charging points in 2016, while EV adoption grew at more than double that rate.
One way of increasing EV charging spots without adding more obstacles to the side roads is to utilize the lampposts across the pavements as charging sources. They are available in almost every street and provide a convenient electrical connection to the national grid. Instead of creating new charging stations with infrastructural damage, this approach retrofits existing street lampposts enabling them as an EV charger. By this means installation costs are minimised and the need to do any major construction works on the streets or roads is avoided with no need to install new cables or major electrical equipment.
Our partner students have developed and presented the innovative idea of smart lampposts in two key competitions and have won an award in London Student Sustainability Conference 2019 as well as being selected among top 30 projects in the field of technology for London Mayor's Entrepreneur Competition 2019.
IntelliCasa was delighted by the results and would like to thank the students for their achievements. We are looking forward to the progress of Smart Lampposts.