Prague to buy and install 150 electric vehicle chargers in streetlights

The municipal company Prague City Technologies (THMP) will buy and install 150 electric vehicle chargers in streetlights that it had previously adapted for this purpose. It will use EU funding to do so. Tomáš Jílek, the company’s director, told the Czech News Agency (ČTK). The city is gradually modernizing selected streetlights for charger installation; it first installed one on a trial basis in 2022 in Vinohrady.

This week, THMP announced a tender for the equipment, with an estimated value of 15 million crowns excluding VAT. Jílek said the city plans to obtain most of the funding from European funds, while the company’s employees will handle the installation, which will be relatively straightforward once the streetlight cables have been upgraded. Once the tender process is complete, installing the chargers will take a few months, he added.

The original plan was for the operator of the prepared streetlights to install the chargers; the city plans to select the operator through a concession procedure. Jílek said the procedure is still being prepared, but a grant program has since been announced that the city can use to purchase the chargers. “We felt it would be a shame to let the grant call go unnoticed,” the director said. He added that, if selected through the tender, the concessionaire will also be responsible for the chargers installed by the city. In addition to streetlights, the city is also planning to install standalone EV chargers, according to Jílek.

There are around 136,000 public streetlights in Prague. Installing charging stations requires new cables to be connected to the streetlights, with enough capacity to supply power to both the light and the charger. According to previous information, THMP upgraded 113 streetlights this way last year, with a further 239 planned for this year.

The city installed chargers on a trial basis in the streetlights it had upgraded in Vinohrady, where the municipal company installed 13 charging stations with a total of 25 charging points at the end of 2022. Jílek said the chargers are heavily used. The city expects the number of electric vehicles in Prague to rise to as many as 180,000 by 2030, requiring around 4,500 charging points.