Carlow replacing old phone kiosks with rapid EV chargers

County Carlow is pioneering with the installation of the first of a national roll out of electric vehicle charging stations that will replace obsolete pay phone kiosks around Ireland.

Telecommunications firm eir has joined forces with car and van charging network provider EasyGo to roll-out its EV rapid chargers in towns and cities across the country.

The chargers in Carlow, Tullow and Bagenalstown have been installed at zero cost to Carlow County Council, and plans are in place to roll these out in a number of other counties, EasyGo has said.

The seven new EV chargers installed in Carlow are a mixture of Dual 50kW DC (Rapid) chargers and Dual 22kW AC (Destination) chargers.

The four Carlow Town chargers can be found at; Kennedy Street, Green Lane (2), and Green Bank Car Park, while a further three EV charging points have been installed in Tullow, Bagenalstown and Borris Main Street.

EasyGo utilises Tritium chargers which are amongst the most advanced DC Rapid chargers in the world. The chargers feature twin cables to simultaneously charge two EVs, which claims to add up to 100km of range to an electric vehicle and providing up to 80 per cent of the required charge in just 30 minutes.

The hardware platform employed by Tritium allows for faster maintenance and improved uptime and reliability and are built for any environment, thriving in temperatures from -35°C to +50°C.

Chris Kelly, EasyGo technical director, said the eir / EasyGo partnership plans to replace up to 180 telephone kiosks with fast EV chargers “at no cost to local authorities”.

“In fact, we are pleased to report that we have active engagement with many councils across the country and will be making some announcements on those in the coming weeks,” he said.

Kelly added that County Carlow has overnight “become much more accessible for electric vehicle drivers”.

“We welcome any inquiries from any local authority to our office in Maynooth, and our door is open to anyone who requires an EV charger installed,” he stated.

Chief executive of eir, Oliver Loomes said that in order for the country to make the switch to EVs, the required infrastructure must be in place, not just in cities, but across all of Ireland.

“This new infrastructure will benefit the community similar to the way public payphone services once did,” he said. “The chargers will not only benefit people living and working in Carlow, but those travelling through. Today we are in discussion with other County Councils across the country and we hope others will follow Carlow’s lead.”

“Wherever possible we will replace unused eir payphone kiosks with rapid EV charging units, and we will continue to assist EasyGo and County Councils across Ireland to help to make the transition to electric vehicle ownership a viable alternative for people,” Loomes added.