November 12, 2025
Let there be charge
Using Street Lamps as EV Chargers – Tech Briefs
Street lamps as chargers? Europe yawns, paywalls rage
TLDR: Penn State tested 23 streetlight EV chargers and found them cheap and accessible, aimed at helping people without home garages. Commenters roasted the “new” idea as old in Europe, slammed the paywalled paper, and argued over slow charging and neighborhood pushback—equity meets NIMBY in a very public plug-in debate.
Penn State dropped a feel-good pilot: 23 streetlight EV chargers in Kansas City, pitched as a low-cost, equitable way for apartment dwellers to finally plug in. The study says they’re cheaper, greener, and more convenient than traditional stations. But the comments lit up faster than a motion sensor. Euro readers rolled in like, “Cute idea, America, but we’ve been doing this for years.” One user even name-dropped a 2017 video and a German company, turning the thread into a “who did it first” remix.
Then came the plot twist: the paper is behind a paywall, despite government funding. Cue outrage over the DOI link and a chorus of “our taxes, their paywall.” Another commenter took it street-level gritty, recalling a documentary where a homeless camp literally spliced power from a lamp post—“DIY beat academia.” Pragmatists chimed in too: streetlights can be slow (think 3.6 kW “overnight only”), with skeptics noting similar products “didn’t catch on.” Layer in the article’s own neighborhood drama—some residents loved the idea, others said NIMBY (“don’t bring strangers in front of my house”)—and you’ve got a clash of ideals: accessibility vs. speed, innovation vs. “late to the party,” public good vs. paywalled research. The lamps are bright; the comments, brighter.
Key Points
- •Penn State researchers developed and tested a framework for using streetlights as EV chargers.
- •They installed 23 streetlight charging units in Kansas City, MO, to evaluate the approach.
- •Streetlight charging was found to be more cost- and time-effective, with fewer environmental impacts, and more accessible than traditional EV stations.
- •Predicting charging demand was a major technical challenge due to limited early data for machine learning models.
- •The project considered technical requirements of streetlight posts, proximity to apartments and transformers, and community engagement; ongoing research includes weather impacts on EV charging.