EV chargers embedded in light poles, and open parking, trialled in first “EV ready street”

Waverley Council has made a significant stride towards promoting electric vehicle (EV) adoption by installing five integrated EV chargers within new light poles along a street in Bondi, creating what we believe is the first ‘EV-ready’ street in NSW..

The chargers in Glenayr Avenue in Bondi are single-port 7 kW AC ChargeMates, seamlessly recessed into the extruded aluminum skeleton on five new multifunction poles.

Since their installation in November 2023, these chargers have been utilized by more than 210 vehicles. Users are required to pay $0.42/kWh.

“Around 64% of Waverley residents live in flats or apartments and have difficulty charging at home, so these sorts of public on-street charging solutions are a real game changer,” Mayor Paula Masselos said.

In a bold move, the council is also trialling a system without dedicated ‘EV-only-while-charging’ parking spaces at each of the five sites.

Non-dedicated parking is common in parts of Europe, this nine month trial aims to assess the feasibility of managing chargers in areas where parking is highly contested. It will compare utilisation rates at other charging sites within the council.

These chargers were integrated as part of the council’s streetscape upgrade of  Glenayr Avenue, incorporating rain gardens for improved water quality, 32 new native trees to create habitat, reduce heat, and enhance aesthetics, as well as road resurfacing using recycled glass, repurposed plastic bags, recycled ink toner and recycled asphalt concrete.

Waverley’s senior project manager Cameron Eccles said the installations have been a collaborative effort between JetCharge (the maker of ChargeMate), MFP Systems (the multifunction pole provider), Mack Civil (the principal contractor), and Rees Power Distribution Infrastructure (the electrical contractor).

He said  the poles and access system had to be redesigned to provide enough space for the charger and all the wiring.

They are part of a larger network of 45 local public charging ports, known as the ‘ChargEast’ network across the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney involving three councils –  Randwick, Waverley, and Woollahra.

In November 2023, these councils adopted the ‘Leading the Charge: Eastern Suburbs Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Strategy 2023,’ outlining the plan to install 450 publicly accessible charging ports by 2025 to accommodate the growing number of EVs on the roads.

Since the launch of the EV network in 2019, the three councils have helped deployed over 50% of the installed public EV charging capacity in Sydney’s east. The emphasis has been on local and neighbourhood centres, as well as high-density residential areas, addressing locations where there is a lack of private investment.

This story has been written by Anthony Weinberg, the regional environment program manager at Randwick, Waverley and Woollahra Councils