The Road to Electrification: Smart Parking can help make it happen
On March 16th, Cleverciti, Element Energy, Trojan Energy & British Parking Association co-hosted the webinar: “The road to electrification: how parking data can assist Local Authorities with electric transition and beyond.”
The speaker panel consisted of:
Chris Heddle, Country Manager UK & Ireland at Cleverciti
David Parker, COO at Cleverciti
Sarah Clements, Senior Consultant at Element Energy
Hugh Mackenzie, COO at Trojan Energy
Julian O'Kelly, PhD, Head of Technology, Innovation and Research at the British Parking Association (BPA)
During the webinar, which was attended by 52 representatives of local authorities from the UK, Chris Heddle from Cleverciti took on the role of moderator and lead the conversation around the switch to electric vehicles in cities and how smart parking can help local authorities during the transition. After introducing all members of the speaker panel, Mr. O’Kelly was the first to kick off by directly addressing the topic at hand: the fact that the transport & mobility sector is not nearly as far advanced in terms of reducing carbon emissions as they should be, especially in these times of increased volumes of delivery services, such as Amazon. Electric Vehicles (EV) are, in the eyes of the BPA, a large part of the solution. That is why the BPA is working with the government to support a National Parking Platform; a publicly owned, national facility that enables Parking Operators (public or private) to communicate digitally with service providers, covering data like occupancy or payments & reservation information. Parking space, in the eyes of Mr. O’Kelly, should be approached in the future as mobility space.
The next speaker, Ms. Clements from Element Energy, which is a consultancy that only works on low and zero-emission projects with local authorities (LA), gave an example of a project that they did to support LAs on their road to electrification: an analysis for the Birmingham city council to assess taxi demand to determine where charging points should be located. This is only one of the means of support that LAs can receive on their journey to electrification.
Mr. MacKenzie from Trojan Energy, the company that produces the Flat & Flush Connector, shared with the audience how their EV charging solution works. The connector is a charging point that is located a few centimeters from the edge of the curb and is hidden in the pavement. When a user accesses its personal lance, the charger rises and is ready for use. In addition to that, Trojan recently teamed up with Cleverciti, to tackle another challenge concerning on-street charging without EV-only bays: the blocking of parking spaces by non-EV vehicles. That is why they decided to install Cleverciti Sensors on lampposts along the street, that monitor every moment to see if a parking space is available. This data is used in an app for EV drivers, that shows them exactly which spaces are available in real-time, giving them a clear parking advantage over non-EV drivers.
Last but not least, Mr. Heddle, on behalf of Cleverciti, shared how parking data can assist LAs with electrification and beyond. The parking pressure today is huge: 95% of the time a car is parked and 44 hours of time is wasted by people in search of a parking space. In addition to that, 1.3kg CO2 is emitted by parking search and 23.3 billion Pounds are lost due to parking search. As a result, 34% of the drivers will resort to negative behavior. Smart parking helps overcome this challenge, for example by applying Cleverciti’s sensor technology that monitors and stimulates compliance. By providing the Cleverciti App that can be integrated into payment or city apps, Cleverciti is aiming for maximum adoption by the local drivers, reducing traffic and emissions.
It is safe to say that when you combine EV infrastructure with smart parking data, that is when the puzzle truly comes together. By combining both you can encourage correct use of space, incentivize EV drivers to vacate EV bays when fully charged, notify EV drivers of charging bays becoming available, etc.
Of course, this is not all that was talked about. Wish to find out more? The full recording of the event can be viewed below:
Wish to know more about smart parking and its role in the road to electrification? Schedule a demo with one of our smart parking experts by clicking the button below.