Dublin’s charging strategy relies heavily on drivers in Fingal being able to park and charge their cars in driveways. But that’s not an option for everyone.
When Richard Molnar and his wife decided to switch from a petrol car to an electric vehicle, there weren’t many places nearby to charge it.
There are only two charging stations near their home in Rush, he says. “One is in the Lidl in Lusk, which is a fast charger, and the other is at the Tesco in Rush.”
If traffic isn’t too bad, they are about 10 minutes away by car, he says.
But in the long run, a home port would be more convenient for them and cheaper, he says. “A public charger is 63 to 64 cents per kilowatt. The price at home is half that.”
His solution was to try to install a personal charger outside their terraced home, he says.
They don’t have a private driveway or a front garden, he says. “Theoretically, I can install a charger there. But, because it’s not on my property, it’s the property of the council, I needed to get a declaration of exemption.”
He applied for one of those on 30 June. On 25 July, a planner at Fingal County Council ruled against him, meaning he has to apply for planning permission.
At a meeting of the Balbriggan, Rush-Lusk, Swords Area Committee on 14 September, councillors raised the issue of Molnar’s request for permission for his private charger.
In a motion, Labour Councillor Robert O’Donoghue asked what was going to be done to put chargers in estates that had already been built where homes have no private driveways.
And “how similar situations for residents wishing to install Electric Vehicle chargers in their homes may be avoided in the future in the interest of reducing carbon emissions”, he said in a motion.
In response, senior planner Malachy Browne pointed to the electric vehicle charging strategy published by Dublin’s four local authorities in June 2022.
The Dublin councils are talking to stakeholders about how to roll out “neighbourhood (bollard/public lighting) & destination chargers in towns & villages across Fingal”, he wrote in his response.
The charging strategy drawn up by the four councils does highlight a conundrum, though, and raises questions about how much they want to overcome the charging-at-home issue for residents without a private place to park and charge outside the city centre.
The authors favour big hubs where people can rapidly charge rather than points within neighbourhoods, the strategy says.
Fewer devices are needed that way and it stops lots of infrastructure spread along streets and pavements, it says. “Rapid hub charging is more compatible with shifting residents away from privately owned car.”
Neighbourhood charging should be a last resort, it says.
Molnar and his wife have lived in their home since 2017, he says.
In January 2022, they began to seriously research how they could reduce their carbon footprint, he says.
First, they installed solar panels, he says. The next step was to get an electric car. “With the solar panels, it would really have been no cost for me to charge my car from my home.”
Their home in a cul-de-sac leads right out onto a footpath with a grass verge, he says. “You could probably install a charger on your wall, but if you lay down the charging cable on the footpath, it’s hazardous.”
His idea was to seek permission to open up the footpath, and lay a cable underneath, which would be safer, he says. “Then you renew the path on that little area, and put a pedestal close to the car parking space.”
In his application for a planning exemption, Molnar said the cable for his pedestal, a post with a charging unit, would be installed in ducting and marked with warning tape.
In their decision, the council planner said the works weren’t to create a connection to a wired broadcast relay service, electricity supply line, or a water or gas mains. So, the Molnars’ project couldn’t get exempted.
In the Electrical Vehicle Charging Strategy published by the four Dublin Local Authorities in June 2022, neighbourhood charging was listed as a focus of the councils. Not home charging.
Neighbourhood charging is designed to help EV drivers who don’t have off-street parking, and involves charging, usually overnight, at a local station, near the user’s home, it says.
But, in the strategy, which estimates that by 2030, there will be approximately 138,000 electric vehicles in Dublin, this is the less favoured of two approaches.
The first, and preferred option, is building big rapid-charging hubs.
Rapid-charging hubs require less infrastructure, and are more efficient, with their speeds likened to that of petrol stations.
The second is the mixed-technology hub. This is composed of both rapid and neighbourhood charging locations.
“Rapid hub charging is more compatible with shifting residents away from privately owned cars,” the report says.
Slow and fast charging points in neighbourhoods should be provided where there is a definite need, and where rapid charging isn’t possible, it says.
This is because they may prevent users from moving away from private vehicles and onto public transport.
Molnar welcomes the idea of encouraging people to shift over to public transport, he says. But, it needs to be affordable and punctual, he says.
“If it is expensive or not reliable, or even worse both, they will not choose it over the comfort of a car,” he says.
He hasn’t used buses in a long time, both because he finds them unreliable and due to a medical condition, he says. Although, he points out that he is a unique case.
The strategy makes sense, broadly speaking, though, he says.
“I would love to support the government if they would like to build a proper network of cycling lanes, since that would be the most healthy and economical way of transport,” he says.
Over the course of the next few years, the four local authorities will be involved in the roll-out of approximately 3,500 chargers, David Storey, Fingal County Council’s director of services for environment, climate action and active travel, told a Howth-Malahide Area Committee in February.
Storey, who chairs the Dublin Local Authority EV Infrastructure working group, said that across the region, 600 neighbourhood charging locations had been identified, with a further 50 destination charger locations, each of which would have four ports.
Social Democrats Councillor Joan Hopkins, at the February meeting, said that around 600 for all of Dublin is going to make it very difficult for people who want to do the right thing by switching to EVs.
By 2030, the Dublin EV strategy says that Fingal alone would need around 660 slow-fast neighbourhood charging points, and around 50 rapid hubs.
But in the strategy, a majority of the Dublin City Council area is marked as a recommended priority for the roll-out of rapid-charging hubs.
Most of Fingal is not classed as a priority development area, because, the strategy says, its analysis shows that a high share of residents have access to off-street parking. So they can charge their cars easily from their houses.
Only areas such as Malahide, Balbriggan and around Dublin Airport that were marked for rapid-charging hub deployment.
Codema, Dublin’s Energy Agency, in its Dublin Region Energy Masterplan, estimates that 77 percent of cars in Fingal have access to off-street parking, in comparison to 56 percent in Dublin city.
An estimate in the Dublin strategy shows that only 12 percent of drivers in Fingal park on public streets. But that estimate could be low, it says.
“One potential example of this raised during strategy development are estates in Fingal (e.g. Swords, Lusk) which may be expected to have off-street parking but in fact do not,” it says.
A worry among councillors in Fingal is that, while there is provision for the installation of charging points in new residential estates, existing neighbourhoods may not have it so easy.
Last Friday, Hopkins said she is worried about how few EV chargers will be available in many existing housing estates around Fingal. “I live in an apartment block, a fairly new one, and we’ve no facilities for EV charging.”
A lot of retrofitting will be needed in older estates, like Molnar’s, says O’Donoghue, the Labour councillor. “The problem here, in estates that are 20 years old, is finding a solution for private homeowners to be able to charge their car.”
In his motion on 14 September, O’Donoghue, the Labour councillor, asked that the council’s chief executive provide a report regarding the installation of EV chargers in established estates.
Residents were being stymied in their ability to install chargers outside their homes, he said in the motion, despite a lack of public chargers in Rush.
In the report written in response, Bradley, the senior planner, said the council’s development plan for 2023–2029 supports the provision of EV charging points.
Bradley did not address the issue around established estates. But said the plan’s standards require that all apartment buildings must incorporate charging points at 20 percent of the proposed parking spaces and appropriate infrastructure, such as ducting, to allow for the future fit-out of a charging point at all parking spaces.
“All other parking spaces, including in residential developments, should be constructed to be capable of accommodating future charging points,” he wrote.
A spokesperson for the Zero Emissions Vehicles Ireland office in the Department of Transport said on Tuesday evening that around 80 percent of EV charging is done at home, and that this will continue to be the preferred and encouraged option.
A grant of €600 is available for their installation, they said. “On street residential neighbourhood chargers or charging hubs are solutions which will also be put in place for those without driveways or the ability to install a home base charger.”
In late September, O’Donoghue said that Molnar’s case is the first of its kind that he’s encountered. “But it’s not going to be the last,” he said with a laugh.
A broader roll-out of EV charging points is imminent, he was told by Bradley in the response to his motion.
A Fingal County Council spokesperson says the roll-out of infrastructure for destination and neighbourhood chargers is anticipated to commence in the fourth quarter of 2023. “However, the exact location of these chargers needs to be identified in consultation with EBS networks.”
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