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3,500 street cabinets of the telecom giant Proximus in Flanders are being converted into charging stations for electric cars. A pilot project was launched in Mechelen on Thursday.
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Flemish Minister of the Interior Bart Somers (Open VLD) took a first Proximus street cabinet converted into a charging station in Mechelen on Thursday. In the coming months, seven other street cabinets will be converted.
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For the time being, this is a small-scale trial of four months. It must then be shown whether the project is a success and can possibly be applied throughout the country. The state telecom company is working together with the grid operator Fluvius and the city of Mechelen.
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Proximus has about 28,000 street cabinets throughout the country, but mainly due to its location, only a small part is suitable as a charging station. ‘It makes no sense in a neighborhood where all houses have their own driveway to transform an old street cupboard into a charging station,’ says Proximus spokesperson Fabrice Gansbeke.
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The essence
- Tens of thousands of charging stations will have to be installed in Flanders in the coming years to keep up with the expected advance of the electric car.
- Proximus has thousands of street cabinets at strategic locations in cities that can be converted into charging stations without much effort.
- If the pilot project is a success, up to 7,000 charging points could be added quickly.
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The charging stations can be converted because Proximus is gradually replacing its old cable network with fiber optics. ‘The street cabinets don’t need that,’ says Gansbeke. This frees up quite a bit of space in the street cabinets. Many street cabinets are located in city centers and because of that location are ideal for establishing a publicly accessible charging station.
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The street cabinets must be connected to the 400 volt network of the network administrators. This makes Proximus’ street cabinets in Brussels unsuitable because the capital largely runs on a 230-volt network.
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In addition, the street cabinets are already equipped with an electricity connection, which means that considerably less (excavation) work is required than with a charging station that has to be placed on a sidewalk from scratch.
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Fast permits
Each converted street cabinet can accommodate two charging points. Equipped with third-party software, the charging stations work with most charging cards. The rates depend on the formula, but according to Proximus are the usual market prices.
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The test period must show whether the project qualifies for Flemish charging station subsidies and how the operation takes place. ‘We are not going to be a charging station company’, says Gansbeke. According to him, it is not excluded that users of the 4411 parking app from Proximus can pay for their charging at the street cabinet posts.
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Somers argues that the often rather cumbersome bureaucracy surrounding the permits for the construction of a street cupboard pole can run considerably more smoothly because they can be applied for collectively.
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