Boydens - Life at Home | Winter 2022 - Issue 01

boydens.co.uk Sustainability 60 Electrifying the nation’s car fleet represents a significant aspect of Government plans to achieve a target for net zero carbon emissions by 2050. In support of this target, a significant (and, arguably, unprecedented) rollout of supporting infrastructure will be needed. Most obviously among those aspects is an increase in the number of places to charge electric vehicles in homes and public spaces – and the race is on to build that infrastructure. Almost 26,000 publicly available electric vehicle charging devices have been installed – including 4,900 rapid versions. A total of 250,000 points in homes and workplaces have already been put in place in the UK. So, how is the design of homes changing to accommodate electric vehicles and what will be the impact on homeowners of this ‘new electric revolution’? By 2025, it is estimated that one in six of all new cars worldwide will be electric. Developers have acknowledged that the electric car will have a significant impact upon design considerations for new homes. From 2022, new build sites such as supermarkets and office blocks will be required to provide electric vehicle charging points as standard, as part of the phasing out of petrol and diesel cars before sales come to an end in 2030. The UK Government expects the move to lead to 145,000 new charging points being added each year. While new homes may have the infrastructure for this transition built in, what will this change mean for our existing housing stock? The home of the future As electric vehicles are becoming more mainstream, the cost of dedicated charging points (much faster than using a standard threepin plug socket) and installed on the outside of homes is falling. This is ideal if you live in a home where your car is parked on a driveway. If you don’t have off-road parking, however, electric car ownership poses more of a challenge. Many modern apartment blocks have electric charging spaces, but there is likely to be a surge of ‘retrofitting’ required in order to bring other blocks up to standard, with leaseholders left to decide who will pay for installation and running of the charging systems utilised. Homes, too, are seeing a boom in the expansion of the number of dedicated charging points fitted. This is relatively simple if you live in a property with a dedicated driveway where you can park your electric car. If you rely on street or communal parking, however, there are new challenges and a whole new set of infrastructure to consider. Clearly, running an electric cable from a property and over a footpath isn’t a practical solution (assuming you are always able to park directly in front of your home), and many Local Authorities forbid the trailing of cables across pathways for safety reasons. In such instances, new innovative solutions, such as cable gulleys concealing wires or overhead cable-carrying structures, may need to be used, which will transform the appearance of residential streets in the future. Ubitricity is a company which utilises existing street light lamppost infrastructure for homes without driveways and is expanding in the UK. Countries such as Norway, the Netherlands and Denmark are leading the way with innovative new solutions to local charging, making use of existing lamppost infrastructure wherever possible and also incorporating ‘pay as you go’ street-side charging capacity and reserved parking bays. “By 2025, it is estimated that one in six of all new cars worldwide will be electric.”

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTA4ODM=