At Brite, we love Denmark. An amazing country full of wonderful creative ideas for design and innovation and admirable plans for carbon reduction. Denmark is a country similar in size to Ireland. Its population is 11% larger than that of the Republic.

During a recent visit to Copenhagen, we were excited to see EV charge points on every corner. There were charging stations on every street. They don’t even mark them as EV-only spaces because almost every car is an EV.

Many people live in apartments instead of houses. If you want an electric car, you can buy a parking pass. Then, you can plug in and drive around the city in your quiet and comfortable car. There are many EV chargers nearby at all times.

In fact, Copenhagen has over 1,800 public electric vehicle charging points. This extensive network supports the city's commitment to sustainability and facilitates the growing number of electric vehicles on the road. Galway, Ireland’s third city has approximately 30 public chargers.

In 2029, public electric vehicle (EV) charging stations in Denmark are projected to generate over 236 million euros in revenue. This is a big increase from the 46.6 million euros recorded in 2023. It shows that revenue has more than quadrupled. This level of increase makes it attractive for ev charge manufacturers and Charge point operators to invest in rolling out chargers.

EV charging supplied by Wind Energy electricity

The Danish government has also provided DKK 50 million for public charging stations. In Copenhagen, electric vehicles can park for free in public parking spots. This does not include underground facilities. They also do not have time limits in three-hour parking zones.

One interesting fact about public EV charging in Copenhagen is that some providers, like E.ON, are testing dynamic pricing. This means rates change based on the time of day and grid capacity. They offer discounts of up to 50%. When electricity prices are high due to grid capacity, selling kilowatt-hours during off-peak times makes sense.

So, what’s wrong in Ireland. Why are we stuck on rolling out EV chargers?

Companies like Amazon Web Services are among the biggest users of electricity in Ireland. They have some of the largest data center clusters in the world located in Ireland. These giant buildings the size of many football pitches house servers and computers as far as the eye can see and all of these must be powered and cooled.

They have a high electricity demand, putting pressure on the grid, especially in areas like Dublin where many are located. This increased demand, combined with a massively growing population high employment levels and overall economic activity, is hugely straining the existing grid infrastructure.

What does that mean? That the ESB have recently put a constraint warning on most of the available power in the country.

The ESB’s own public charging business ESB Ecars have seen many ESB faults with their older chargers, they are attempting to upgrade their network currently but the cost of this will be tens of millions. And, as we know, the power is simply not there to put in the newest EV chargers near you.

Justin Moran from Build Our Grid, an Irish NGO, says the Irish electric grid needs urgent upgrades. He compares it to a road network that is always being repaired. When repairs happen, it causes problems in the transmission system, much like a traffic jam on the roads.

There is no problem making electricity. The issue is transporting it. Because of this, wind farms must reduce their power output or turn off.

This means that the goal for Irish EV car sales is 945,000 by 2030. This target is unrealistic because there are only 73,000 EVs in the market now. If there is not a sufficient number

Brite as a Charging Point Operator is itself constrained in rolling out EV charging points near you, near me, near accommodation locations, city centres, towns, tourist centres, because the city councils must produce strategic plans of where they want to put chargers, then they must pass local bye laws to allow chargers to be put onto public space and then they must draft tenders and allow a time for applications to tenders and follow up with accepting and contracting the winning tender bids.

From April 2025, that process is likely to take three to five years at which point the applicant may or may not deliver the chargers.

The penalty for non-delivery of a public tender in Ireland is not sufficient so as to worry the winning applicant. At delivery, once CPOs agree to install chargers on public land, they must apply to the ESB. They need to request new connections in places that may or may not have power available.

All of the planning, the strategies, the consulting costs, for the roll out of all of these EV chargers near you, totally depend on a grid that has the capacity. Brite are launching one of the largest EV charge sites in Galway city, a one million volt amperes site in the coming months.

In terms of capacity, this site will have the capacity to charge ten EV cars simultaneously at a charge rate of one hundred kilowatts per hour.

If you compare the amount of power that is going to be delivered on that site, the equivalent amount of power being delivered for those ten cars would also power seventy one houses for a day. A quick comparison regarding data centres is, a large data center consumes the equivalent amount of electricity that would power half a million homes in Ireland for a day.

We need more chargers, Galway needs hundreds of public chargers. We are very worried about the EV charger business. If the grid in Galway city does not improve, people will not switch to electric cars. Doubling or tripling the grid's capacity is necessary for this change to happen.

We are not moving to Denmark, but we should admire their progress in electric vehicle (EV) adoption. They have invested in their grid and quickly set up thousands of public chargers, we are hopeful we can do the same soon.

By Colin Barry @ Brite EV Charging

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