Valencia uses lampposts to charge electric vehicles in sustainable project

Internationally renowned for its stunning architecture, the Spanish city of Valencia has been selected this year among the 100 European cities taking up the challenge to become climate neutral by 2030.

Once home to a local fishing community, the famous Cabanyal area has become a lab for energy efficiency, implemented within MAtchUP, an EU-funded project aimed at developing and upscaling smart city solutions, designed to support a sustainable urban transformation.

“Solar panels have been installed in the framework of the MatchUp project. It is one of the pilot projects that we are developing here.”

“In particular, the City Council launched a call for tenders to install this type of solar panels, the so-called “solar pergolas”, in five different points of Valencia,” said Laurie Barriol an R&D Technician working on the EU project MATchUP.

This public urban innovation centre will soon be home to the city’s first “socialised solar plant”, a 100,000 euro project, 80% of which is financed by citizens who have each invested between 100 and 2000 euros.

Some 20,000 lampposts on the beachfront are being equipped with devices aimed at monitoring their consumption and proper functioning remotely.

Street lights are also used to recharge electric cars. The initiative has been so successful that the municipality is now working to increase the initial 12 charging stations to more than 150.

“To make an estimate of the savings, just consider that installing a recharging point of this type costs about 2,500 euros, compared to the 50,000 euros required for the traditional charging points,” said project coordinator Ernesto Faubel.

Together with Dresden, in Germany and Antalya in Turkey, Valencia is one of the so-called lighthouse cities, selected to showcase large-scale demonstrations within the MAtchUP project.

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Valencia uses lampposts to charge electric vehicles in sustainable project
Source: Reporters View PH