ISP BT Confirms Pilot to Convert Street Cabinets into EV Car Charges
In June, we reported on how Openreach were “exploring whether it’s practical” to deploy public EV chargers next to some of their 90,000 UK broadband cabinets (here). The good news is that BT, via their start-up and Digital incubation team, Etc. (that’s the actual name), plan to run a pilot that will “convert or upgrade” its cabinets for EV charging units.
The first phase of the EV charging pilots (both technical and commercial), open to Openreach and BT Group colleagues, is planned to kick off in Northern Ireland in the Autumn of 2023, and will then be expanded to the public with more pilot locations added across the UK later in the year. This pilot phase is expected to run for 2 years.
By the sounds of it, BT and Openreach will be focusing their efforts on street cabinets that are “currently used for providing copper-based broadband and phone services” (this makes it sounds like PCPs will be the focus, but it’s actually FTTC / DSLAM cabs), and which will be decommissioned as the ambitious nationwide upgrade to full fibre (FTTP) progresses.
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Naturally, the idea here is that the operator’s own staff and engineers will be given preferential access, not only during the pilot but possibly also during the commercialisation phase too (i.e. the public could expect to get access if an Openreach/BT van isn’t already parked and using the charger).
BT’s Statement
The team will scope a range of different technical, commercial and operational considerations with bringing this EV charge point network online, including:
Technical – including cabinet location, power availability, customer accessibility, digital customer experience and engineering considerations
Civil planning – including location, local council engagement and physical accessibility
Commercial – including public funding options, private investment, partnership, and wider financial modelling
Operational – as a dedicated BT Group venture or in partnership with others
Etc.’s early projections suggest that, over time, as many as 60,000 of the Group’s 90,000 cabinets may be suitable for upgrades to EV charging points; but neither the trials nor any potential scaling of the new EV charge network would present any change or disruption to the telecommunications services supported from the cabinets. However, decisions on any further scaling on this programme will depend on the success of the two years of pilots.
As we’ve said before and BT indirectly acknowledges above, this isn’t going to work in every area, since not all cabinets are suitably positioned and there may be other obstacles too (e.g. issues of council approval, road access, physical location etc.).
Likewise, street side chargers need to be kept as small as possible, which means that it would probably only support slower charging speeds (i.e. not super rapid charging). We should point out that a lot of their cabinets typically use no more than a few hundred watts, but the power supply could be upgraded and without needing major works.
Tom Guy, Managing Director of Etc. at BT Group, said:
“With the ban on sales of internal combustion engine vehicles coming in 2030, and with only around 45,000 public charge points today, the UK needs a massive upgrade to meet the needs of the EV revolution. We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to connect for good in a whole new way by innovating around our cabinet infrastructure.
The pilots are critical for the team to work through the assessment and establish effective technical, commercial and operational routes to market over the next two years.”
Doing all this at the same time as retiring their old copper network seems like a sensible and cost-efficient approach, which could help the Government to grow the number of UK charge points to their target of 300,000 by 2030, which is being backed by a public investment of £1.6bn.
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The move would also be good for Openreach, which is already deep into the process of converting (replacing) all of its diesel fleet to electric by 2030, which reflects around 28,000 vans across the UK that are used for essential work every day. Various models from Renault (here) and Vauxhall (here) have already been deployed, and they currently expect to have just shy of 5,000 EVs by the end of this financial year.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Stop scaremongering electric car will NOT solved climate change, more another excuse to pay expensive car over £35k plus higher premium insurance cost! Another UK rip off.
Scaremongering?
I don’t see that in this article, just a contribution to lowering our emissions.
Electric cars don’t lower emissions, okay there may not be stuff coming out of the exhaust, but to make them creates a lot of emissions, and the electricity comes from burning coal and gas (we don’t have surplus of solar or wind energy, that’s already used up). The greenest thing the industry could do is stop selling new cars and governments give grants to keep existing cars on the road for longer allowing customers to pay for repairs using the grant. Keeping your existing car (so a new doesn’t have to be made and the old one disposed off) has the absolute lowest impact on the planet. This would also create a lot of local jobs for independent garages. Why aren’t they doing this? Obvious isn’t it, the car industry exists only to sell new cars, and to find ways to keep you replacing your existing car sooner than you need to.
Battery cars have built in obsolesce like mobile phones, a win win for the industry, but not for the planet.
One issue being overlooked here is just how corrupt the auto industry is when it comes to servicing, parts and labour costs. I’m sure everybody knows somebody, or has an experience themselves, of being totally ripped off or misled by one of those lovely “independent” garages (perhaps on more than one occasion). It took me years to find one that was reasonably trustworthy and fair.
Even official dealers have their problems (e.g. Mercedes charging Mercedes prices, but even on their budget models). At least with an EV, there’s not as many individual bits and pieces to go wrong with regularity. But I’m veering off-topic. Whatever you think about EVs, the reality is they’re here, they’re growing, and more chargers is thus a good thing.
The difference between the auto industry and the mafia? The mafia has less crooks and more scruples.
Exactly,people think electric cars are the answer, but these environmentalists forget to tell you that the mining of lithium is very bad for the environment,increase in global warming,biodiversity loss, water shortages are only a few of the problems it causes..
Worth a watch:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001f7y1/the-secret-genius-of-modern-life-series-1-4-electric-car
Oh god has ISP Review become the new location for Daily Mail and Times readers the amount of FUD on here is ridiculous
If you are worried about lithium mining put down your phone, your laptop, and there is more issues with the mining of cobalt to power Dino Juice cars… Oh and dont forget the chinese prison factories used to make your phones…
Do some proper research before spouting Daily Mailesque BS
I just got a Kia Niro base spec EV for £23,989.. Take a chill pill Phil 🙂
@Phil
You really are uneducated. It takes 9700Kwh a MONTH to run 1 pump jack.. 1 oil pump! Watch this and then maybe your argument won’t be so flimsy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oVrIHcdxjA&t=3s
@FTTP is it?
Most Lithium mining is done in Australia – where they complain only about oil refineries.. something to that no? Watch the above also please. Because you need to be educated also
Oh and Lithium is also used in Bi Polar meds.. Bet you didn’t know that!
If all cars were electric the grid would not be able to cope, also the infrastructure is not there, not enough charging stations and too expensive. Also, a lot of the multi story carparks were not made for the weight of these cars.
Then you got the problem with the batteries and who is going to buy a second hand EV?
The other half did a test drive, in a EV, but hated it, no gears and hated the way it slowed down.
Only about 3% of the cars in the UK are electric though. What’s the point in talking about “if all cars were electric” when they aren’t all electric? Maybe in 2045 they will be, but then they’ll be plugged into 2045’s grid, not today’s grid.
Yeah, they’ve got batteries, but they don’t have all the other crap that fails on an ICE car. That’s a fair tradeoff.
It should be fairly obvious that it’ll be the people that don’t want to, or can’t, spend the money on a new EV that will be buying second-hand EVs.
Your other half hating one model of EV doesn’t really say much about EVs in general.
So, er, the only thing in that post that wasn’t a dumb-on-the-face-of-it thing to say was about the design weight of garages… and that’s actually an interesting thing to think about but you can’t seriously think we shouldn’t switch to EVs because of parking garages?
I’d really like them to focus on the broadband rollout first.
It’d be amazing to see for example them not telling me on one hand new provides of ADSL will be stopped whilst also still having no plans to provide anything else where several of my clients are.
Priorities folks, priorities…
Yeah, contribute to saving the world we live on, or give you better internet connectivity.
This has no impact on their broadband plans.
Thats just a name change. Adsl will.be replaced by SOTAP where no other service exists. Which is just ADSL with digital voice.
ISP BT Confirms Pilot to Covert Street Cabinets into EV Car Charges, *Convert?
Maybe they want to roll it out discreetly to stop the EV moaners.
Maybe they’re going to trial loving them to see if they can truly commit.
oh, that’s covet
If you thought brexit was a divisive issue………
Charges , chsrgers, etc. In fact the “chargers” are in the cars already, when you bought it. What you olug into is a “charging point”.
Well, that depends.
Most vehicles have an AC charger in, which usually stops out at 11 or 22 kwh.
For the “Charging Point” to be a “Charger” – it just has to provide DC to the vehicle, as the car accepts the DC input, rather than using it’s own internal charger.
Semantics.
The article doesn’t say whether the chargers will deliver AC or DC, but I think AC is more likely but charge slowly via the car’s on-board charger which converts AC to DC. The chargers could deliver DC at much higher voltages for faster charging but would cost much more to install and would only make financial sense if Openreach could take card payment for DC charging. It’s feasible to enforce payment but requires work, like a contactless payment system using near-field communication (NFC) for the payment card’s NFC chip to send a signal to the charging station’s NFC reader which then sends a request to your bank to authorise the payment. My suspicion is that Openreach will be like Tesco, providing a mix of slow 7kW and 22kW chargers at no cost.
About as useful as companies with rainbows during June
Wait until you see the road taxes proposed by labour. It has nothing to do with any unscientific and ideological emissions, it’s about controlling where you go
Anyone know what supply size BT install to their FTTC cabinets? If its on a 32A breaker this would enable a 7 kW size charger, which is the typical size of most domestic single-phase EV charge points.
You are also relying on spare capacity in the supply cable up the street, if I remember correctly most residential streets have a 600amp 3phase supply cable which equates to 432KW peak load total which has to include all loading. Bearing in mind that at the same time people will be moving from gas to electric for their cooking and heating as well as having their own EV chargers in operation. At least it will give someone a job going round replacing sub station fuse…lol
Well, it’ll be a single phase into each BT cabinet, so that’ll need upgrading to 3 phase, and usually a new cable all the way back to the substation…same as “can’t we charge cars from lamposts” argument – the answer is that of course you can, especially as a one off trial, but when you work out in day to day scenarios it turns out the existing infrastructure and power supplies aren’t adequate, and the cost will be astronomical.
A couple of questions about this article. “ISP BT” implies to me something to do with a BT Consumer company. Aren’t Openreach responsible for the cabinets so won’t Openreach be running any trials?
More importantly, all of the cabinets that I can think of in this area are in places where you shouldn’t park a car, according to the Highway Code. Is my area exceptional or is this going to be a problem?
It implies BT will be working with openreach in a retailer/wholesaler relationship for the trial.
With regards to suitable cabinet locations, iny experience very few will be suitably located to allow charging from the cabinet. However, if a separate Pilar could be installed within 5-10meters then that would make a great deal more potentially viable.
… but if you have to install a pillar, why involve BT and their cabinet?
They already have power and comms.
Maybe a Pilar is out of the question which will leave the number of viable cabinet locations relatively small.
It seems to make no sense, The cabinets themself would be of no use so all you have is a limited power supply. Most of the cabinets are poorly located for charging an EV. It would be a slow charge as well
If you are going to have street chargers using the supply from lampposts is more sensible. These may have a single or 3 phase supply
There are huge problems with EV charging most of which are being ignored. The national grid was not designed around wind turbines but distributed power stations
Massive upgrades are need to get the power from Wind farms to where the power is actually needed
So far as well the little problem off what do do when the wind is not blowing and there is no sunshine is being ignored
The other problem is the local grid from substations to the home. It is inadequate for mass charging of EV’s
What could possibly be go wrong . . was this new found enthusiasm for EVs “Inspired” by a government “Request”. Watch this space. Tell me its not the current lot of split-arse monkies pulling the strings. Please.
Shirley, a non-sequitar ? Only giving a few months work to a reporting engineer to scribe-up the negative “Won’t works” and “What If’s
After all, those new design roadside broadband cabinets are so robust, they make the internal foil seal to a packet of Woodbine willies look over-engineered.
Picture the scene, Ms blonde-haired day-dream has just been told for the nth time that day that “She’s worth it” after dropping off the sprogs at the day nursery and feels so at one with the World that she decides to top-up the charge in her EV from a BT cabinet (As you do in Marketing land) . . . . . plugs-in, . . . gets a mobile call . . . on on completion of the call . . .forgets she is still plugged in . . and drives off oblivious that she’s lifted the cabinet out of the ground and trailling it behind her . . and wonders why other road users are waving at her.
Meanwhile, several hundred home-based small businesses are left without a landline based internet connection and IP phone for the next 2 months.
The consequences are not usually so dire if the same happens in a ICE garage forecourt.
Incidentally, what became of the other genius (Errr. . .Cheapskate) idea of sticking fibre cables into gas or water pipes to bridge the uneconomic “Last mile” for rural high-speed Broadband connection
Haha that was actually quite hilarious to read, regardless of which poison you choose (ICE or EV).
Don’t EV’s have a built in mechanism that disables the car from moving if you leave the charging cable in? Genuine question because I don’t know the answer. If they don’t, they should do.
Yes, every EV made today will not let you select ‘drive’ if the charge cable is attached. They beep annoyingly and refuse to start or even take off the parking brake.
Thanks Thomas, I assumed that was the case but didn’t know for sure. Anyway, there’s a far more likely chance that Ms blonde-haired day-dream will be wondering why the diesel pump doesn’t fit in the little holes of her new EV at the local BP station.
Most cabinets are away from the road or in places where it is not possible to park anyway
Not a lot of this kind of street furniture is in the right place. like on a corner or no parking nearby.
Also EV having the minerals and battery elements mined by slave labour, and the battery production emissions out striped traditional petrol/diesel cars for many 10,000’s of miles miles. I don’t know why they are so popular outside of performance sport cars and vehicles or why our government is so dumb.