Lighting the way for electric vehicles by using streetlamps as chargers

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Electric vehicles (EVs) can have lower fuel costs and reduce emissions relative to cars that use gasoline, but they are only a practical option if drivers have convenient ways to charge them. For people who live in multi-unit dwellings or in urban areas, access to charging infrastructure may be particularly limited, which in turn limits EV adoption.  

To address this issue, a team of researchers at Penn State created a scalable framework to develop, analyze and evaluate using streetlights as a low-cost, equitable EV charging option. They then installed 23 streetlight charging units in Kansas City, Missouri, and tested their framework. The researchers found that streetlight charging stations, compared to traditional EV charging stations, were more cost- and time-effective, had fewer negative environmental impacts, and were more convenient and accessible. 

Their results were published in the Journal of Urban Planning and Development, which is overseen by the American Society of Civil Engineers. 

“The motivation for this work comes from the fact that many apartment and multi-unit dwelling residents, particularly in urban and downtown areas, lack access to dedicated home EV chargers, since they don’t have the privilege of owning a garage,” said Xianbiao “XB” Hu, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. “Fortunately, streetlight poles are already powered and typically owned by municipalities, making them relatively easy to work with. Their placement — often near on-street parking and in high-traffic areas — makes them well-positioned to serve both local residents and visitors.” 

Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the researchers partnered with the Kansas City, the non-profit organization Metro Energy Center, local utilities companies and the National Renewable Energy Lab to retrofit existing streetlights to function as EV chargers. They then established a three-pronged framework — focused on demand, feasibility and benefits — for other communities to use to develop streetlight EV chargers.  

“The scalability was a huge part of what makes this framework important,” said corresponding author Yang “Chris” Song, who was a doctoral student at Penn State at the time of the research and is now a data scientist at ElectroTempo. “Creating something that works not just in one specific city but that can be adopted by many communities easily is critical for increasing EV use across the country.” 

To determine demand, the researchers looked at factors including land use, station density, points of interest nearby, and traffic volume and then used the data to train artificial intelligence models to make demand predictions based on these factors.  

“We also took into account equity, which here means the proactive engagement with the community to ensure fair and inclusive distribution of the streetlight charging benefits across diverse neighborhoods,” Song said. 

The researchers used the demand and equity analyses to select 23 streetlights and installed EV charging stations. They collected data from the stations for one year. 

Compared to traditional EV charging ports, they found that these stations were much cheaper to install, since the infrastructure already existed. They also found that the streetlight chargers offered significantly faster charging speeds, likely because they draw power from dedicated municipal electrical lines and face less competition from multiple vehicles charging simultaneously, unlike clustered commercial stations, according to Yuyan “Annie” Pan, a postdoctoral researcher working with Hu. The streetlight charging stations also benefited the environment, since there were gasoline savings and greenhouse gas reductions by using locations where cars were already parking. 

“We found that using streetlights for EV charging offers an innovative and equitable approach to expanding charging infrastructure and promoting sustainable electrification,” Pan said. 

For next steps, the researchers said they would like to build on their models to incorporate more detailed socio-economic data and weather information. Incorporating socio-economic factors will help identify communities with limited EV access or adoption potential, ensuring more equitable infrastructure deployment. Weather data is also critical, as extreme temperatures can affect battery performance, travel frequency and overall energy demand.  

Tianjia Yang, a postdoctoral researcher, and Yuxin Ding, a doctoral candidate, both of whom are affiliated with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, are co-authors on the paper.  

The U.S. Department of Energy supported this work.  

At Penn State, researchers are solving real problems that impact the health, safety and quality of life of people across the commonwealth, the nation and around the world. 

For decades, federal support for research has fueled innovation that makes our country safer, our industries more competitive and our economy stronger. Recent federal funding cuts threaten this progress. 

Learn more about the implications of federal funding cuts to our future at Research or Regress.