From inconsistent DNOs through to a ‘Wild West’ of home and cross-pavement residential electric vehicle charging, lighting professionals are becoming seriously worried about what our rapid transition away from the internal combustion engine is meaning for electrical safety.
According to the electric vehicle (EV) mapping and data service Zapmap, as of the end of June a total of 82,369 public charge point devices had been installed across the UK, at 40,479 locations. Moreover, in the first six months of this year, some 8,670 new charge points were installed, an increase of more than a quarter (27%) on the same half-year period last year.
This, of course, is good news for the UK in terms of making the transition to net zero and mitigating global heating. It is also positive for ministers pushing this transition hard, with the Department for Transport aiming for more than 100,000 local charge points to be installed in the coming years.
In fact, beyond the spread of the public charging infrastructure, visit probably most urban residential streets, especially of an evening, and you will nowadays likely find increasing numbers of private residents happily charging their cars from home charge-points and/or in-column charge points.
Again, this is great in terms of our transition away from the old combustion engine and fossil fuels. Indeed (again according to Zapmap), there are now estimated to be more than 1.5 million electric vehicles on our roads, up from just shy of 400,000 just four years ago, and so we are seeing a significant acceleration in EV ownership.
ACCELERATING HEADACHE
For lighting professionals and engineers, however, and especially local authority lighting engineers, this wholesale shift in how many of us are driving and ‘refuelling’ is causing something of a migraine, especially in the context of electrical safety.
It was an issue raised by ILP members at the Lighting Live Annual Conference in Glasgow in June, with attendees to the technical update workshop during the question-and-answer session highlighting that the rapid rollout we’re seeing of EV charge point infrastructure has created something of a vacuum in terms of the technical guidance available to lighting professionals. The ILP’s Vice President – Technical Emily Bolt agreed this was an area the Technical Committee would be addressing as a matter of urgency.
Equally, back in October last year, the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) called for a more standardised approach for EV charging equipment as a way to mitigate faults on the public low-voltage electrical distribution network. The IET has published a standard to tackle this, the Open combined protective and neutral (PEN) conductor detection devices (OPDDs), IET 01:2024. Furthermore, the IET and Department for Transport has published the useful Guide to Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure for Local Authorities. The Chartered Institution of Highways & Transportation (CIHT) is also publishing guidance for local authorities this autumn.
But, as Rob Baines, electrical assets commissioner, Highways and Place, at Derbyshire County Council and the ILP’s local government lead, tells Lighting Journal, the situation is far from optimal – very far from optimal in fact.
‘There most certainly is a gap in the guidance, I feel. For me, there are two strings to it. With on-street EV, in Derbyshire, for example, we have done a tender for 7kWw and 22kW on-street chargers, which is in review at the minute,’ he explains.
For some of these, the electricity is underground, as are the connections and switching gear. ‘Straightaway, for me, that poses a massive water ingress issue. I’ve working in street lighting for 21 years. No matter what a manufacturer says, it is only as good as the last cable gland and water will get in. So, there is a longevity issue there,’ Rob cautions.
INCONSISTENT DNOS
The situation is complicated further by the different approaches adopted by different distribution networks (DNOs). In Derbyshire, for example, the three DNOs that cover the region all operate completely differently in terms of when and where they will allow o-PEN devices to be installed. ‘Literally one side of the street can have an on-column EV charger and the other side can’t. That is how crackers it is at a local level,’ Rob says.
While there are mitigations that can reduce the risk of electrocution – another fuse, an RCD or RCBO for example (residual current device and residual current breaker with over-current) – the fact this is such a new and emerging area and rolling out so rapidly does worry many lighting professionals.
‘I am mindful that, if someone gets an electric shock – heaven forbid a fatal one – this will be case law. The first one when it goes to court, I for one don’t fancy being in the dock with BS 7671 being thrown at me,’ Rob explains.
Moreover, that image earlier of streets full of residents quietly charging their EVs from home charge points is, for local authority lighting engineers such as Rob and Perry Hazell, potentially the stuff of nightmares rather a benign illustration of our shift to a greener future.
Perry is of course ILP Immediate Past President, business manager, Asset Management Services, Environment, Sustainability and Leisure, at London Borough of Southwark and – a man of many hats – chair of the LoEV Group, part of the London Lighting Engineers Group (LoLEG).
CROSS-PAVEMENT CHARGING
The acceleration of EV take-up has led to a commensurate increase in the number of products being licensed and marketed for home-EV charging, whether we’re talking pavement mats, channels, or cable covers. We’re also seeing more solutions that are in-pavement, through-pavement or installed on top of the pavement.
In fact, in July the Department for Transport (DfT) unveiled both a subsidy scheme to cut the upfront cost of EVs and said it was setting up a £25m scheme for local authorities to expand access to cross-pavement technologies and devices that allow cables to run beneath pavements, so connecting homes directly to parked vehicles. This followed on from, in May, relaxing the need for drivers to submit planning applications to install charge points.
‘There are questions around the extent to which these products are trip hazards,’ Perry points out. ‘Or whether there’s a reinstatement piece if or when service works happen on the footpath and who pays for that? Is it put back in in the right way? If the person has paid for a licence to have this, if we as the council then remove it for a period of time because there are works, will there need to be any sort of compensation for that person? So there are some questions and issues here,’ he points out.
The Department for Transport did issue guidance on this in December (late on Christmas Eve in fact): ‘Cross-pavement solutions for charging electric vehicles’.
LoEV also worked with Transport for London and London Councils to publish new guidance over the summer, Cross-footway solutions for electric vehicle infrastructure. This has included looking at cross-pavement solutions and mitigating hazards/risk (and, again, see the panel at the end for more on this). But there are still a worrying number of unknowns and question-marks for local authority lighting engineers, Perry highlights.
‘Mrs Miggins in No 12, Mr Jones in No 14, I have no idea where there incoming supplies are from, no knowledge of their earthing systems. So we’re allowing them to bring an electrical supply to the highway, where there could be a column nearby and a lamp-column charger, maybe 10m or 15m down the road,’ he explains.
‘If someone then is plugged into that with a 10m lead, it could be right next to their house. Which could be right next to their car that they’re charging. So there is a danger there of simultaneous touch potential, and which we don’t think we can mitigate as local authority engineers,’ Perry adds.
‘The real Wild West, for me, comes with the pavement charging,’ agrees Rob Baines. ‘These products offering EV drivers channels that run from their house, across the pavement to their vehicle, I don’t understand how we can be expected to mitigate against risks from a domestic electrical installation that we have no control over?
‘Thankfully this has never come to court – yet. But when it does happen, my other fear, heaven forbid, is that it’s not likely to be an adult. I can envisage it being a child, perhaps retrieving their football, a hand on the bonnet of one car and a hand on the other.
‘If there’s an earth fault on one of those vehicles, and there isn’t an o-PEN device or the o-PEN device hasn’t operated as it should for any reason, that child completes the return path to earth through the adjacent car,’ Rob adds.
LOOKING FOR SOLUTIONS
So, what’s the answer here? What should lighting professionals be asking for?
‘There are two questions really we need answered as local authority engineers,’ says Rob. ‘Firstly, are the cross-pavement solutions safe? Second, even if they are, how do ensure they are always safe? So that the 2.5m touch potential has been correctly mitigated?
‘Yes, you can argue that o-PEN devices are a means of mitigation. But is stipulating the presence of one of those on the resident, is that enough to mitigate the authority against any future risk?’ he adds.
‘Or can that be captured in whatever the licence is?’ questioned Perry. ‘If we allow these to go in, we ensure the relevant licence is given to that individual – and this is where we are building guidance with TfL and London Councils. But that still comes with its own challenges as a local authority engineer. For example, you are going to need annual reviews, ensuring money is taken and relevant information is retained.
‘There needs to be an onus on the homeowner to make sure that that electrical supply has not changed and that the electrical certification is up to date; that they have used an approved supplier, an approved charge-point operator, and so on. Ultimately, their charge point will be on their house and they are running a lead out on to the highway. But we just won’t know,’ he adds.
‘A lot of modern charge points will come with an o-PEN device integral to them, so there is that there which, fundamentally, should mitigate a lot of the touch potential risk. But if for whatever reason there is an issue with that charger and someone is, say, going on holiday the next day and needs to have their EV charged up, they may still take that risk and just plug in whatever means necessary. It may not even be RCD-protected depending on the age of the rest of the domestic install,’ he adds.
LOSS OF COMPETENCY CONTROL
Ultimately, as Perry points out in conclusion: ‘The danger is that all this takes it out of our hands, out of the hands of competent, qualified lighting professionals and engineers.’
There are moves afoot, he points out, to update the Guide to Highway Electrical Street Furniture published in 2018 by the IET, ILP, HEA and LoLEG. But this could take time and there is in the meantime a pressing need for new guidance to fill the vacuum.
‘95% of the Guide to Highway Electrical Street Furniture is still absolutely fine, still up to date, still good,’ Perry points out.
‘What we in LoEV think we need is some practical examples. So, perhaps a guidance note from the ILP. What does it really mean about touch potential for example? Working out from domestic properties where the substation may be? What does it look like on a TN-C-S (PME) system, on a TT system? And then just, in really plain terms, explain the dangers for people. So that guidance note can be understood by anyone, that people really understand the potential dangers here.
‘Even if the mitigation is a lot of electrical test certificates, you need to have competent engineers in the council to be overseeing that, with the resource capacity. If, let’s say, Rob has 10,000 cross-pavement chargers and then has 10,000 electrical test certificates to check every year or functional RCD test certificates coming through the post every six months, that is going to be a nightmare.
‘We really have to think about what this looks like, and the scalability of it, given how this charging infrastructure is now accelerating,’ Perry warns in conclusion.
This is an abridged version of the article that appears in the September edition of Lighting Journal. To read the full article, simply click on the page-turner to your right.
Image: Shutterstock
