Dublin City Council outlines first locations for public EV charging hubs

Ten sites in the city have been chosen for the first batch of public electric-vehicle charging hubs, said a Dublin City Council official on 24 September.

Of the 10 hubs – all with clusters of fast chargers – four are planned in the Pembroke local electoral area in the south-east of the city, and three are in the Clontarf local electoral area.

There is also one intended in Ballyfermot-Drimnagh, one in Cabra-Glasnevin, and one in Ballymun-Finglas. 

And none, in this first batch at least, for the other six local electoral areas in Dublin.

At the meeting of the climate action committee, Carolyn Moore, a Green Party councillor, said she was not at all happy with the spread, she said. 

Especially, with the omission of any hub in Kimmage-Rathmines, which she represents. “I’m furious about this report. I’m about to have a really serious rant,” said Moore.

She said that her words weren’t directed at Darby Mullen, the senior executive engineer who gave the presentation, and hadn’t been in charge of the project for long. 

But at the complete failure of the council to move with any sense of urgency on charging hubs, she said.

Liam Bergin, a council executive manager, said the listed hubs were just phase one. There would be more, he said.

The council had put forward a number of sites, he said, and its commercial partner on the roll-out had looked at whether they would recover the cost of the chargers if they installed them there, he said. “Even without making a profit.”

How it works is that the council licences them the location for a €1 year, he said.

The partner installs significant infrastructure, leases equipment, handles the contracts for the electricity, he said. “So there’s an enormous undertaking.”

Most providers say they are running at a loss, as there has been slower uptake of EVs than they like, he said.

The majority of chargers are loss-leaders at the moment for these companies, but they’re putting them in to see if they can make some payment, Bergin said. “Obviously, they won’t put them in if they’re making little or no payment.” 

They have a commercial exercise that they do in relation to that, he said.

Dublin City Council does play a role, with the public land that it has put up as sites for chargers, he says, but the council isn’t the only player – supermarkets, petrol stations are entering the space too. 

“They all have the same algorithm essentially in terms of what will … where is the footfall, where is the demand for it, and we’re being led by that,” he said.

The journey so far

At the climate action meeting, Mullen, a senior executive engineer, outlined the analyses that had led councils to step in, and to the sites being chosen.

Along with the other three Dublin local authorities, Dublin City Council started to develop its regional strategy for electric-vehicle charging in 2019, said Mullen. 

Consultants at Element Energy did a full review around EV-charging strategies – taking in technology, laws, national objectives, and likely demand, he said. 

They identified suitable locations, he said. “That was based on car ownership, commuter routes and CSO data that was available.”

They looked at funding models and found that, realistically, support from the national government was needed for national roll-out – with one model being full ownership by the councils which would issue concession contracts with charge-point operators to run them, he said.

“There was a hesitation from the private sector to get involved, to invest in it,” he said, because of planning concerns, grid capacity, and slow take-up of electric vehicles.

Local authorities agreed to tender for a charge-point operator to install, manage and maintain, charging infrastructure on public property, he said. The goal was 50 sites, with 200 charges, across the region.

Later, the company ePower, which won the contract to provide and run hubs, reviewed sites for economic and technical viability – and has chosen to run with these 10 as the first in the city, said Mullen. 

It’s already applied to ESB for connections, he said. 

In the meeting

At the meeting, Moore, the Green Party councillor, said she has been fielding calls from her constituents for years about public charging hubs.

In her area of Kimmage-Rathmines, there are thousands of households, who can afford to make the move to an EV, want to, but can’t, she says. “Because they haven’t got driveways, they can’t reliably access charging facilities.”

How on earth are they going to hit government targets for EVs, she said, “when we are simply not providing the facilities to charge cars”.

The national Climate Action Plan set an aim of 1 million electric vehicles on the roads by 2030, with the roll-out of charging infrastructure as one piece of the puzzle. 

As of the end of August 2024, there were about 139,400 electric vehicles, says a report on the plan.

The electric vehicle strategy put out by the four Dublin local authorities three years ago considered different kinds of charging points that the state may get involved in and demand. 

It listed: “residential” hubs for those without driveways, “en-route” hubs along main routes, and “destination” charging points for top-up charges at supermarkets, say.

The city would need, it estimated, 65 of the “residential” rapid hub charging points in local areas by 2025, and 247 by 2030.

Aside from the 10 proposed hubs in the council presentation, Dublin City Council has rolled out one other rapid-charging hub so far – two chargers in Finglas, in a pilot partnership with EasyGo.

Moore said that so far, when constituents in Kimmage-Rathmines have come to her asking about public hubs, she hasn’t been able to give them good news – and still couldn’t. 

“There is no good news in this report for me,” she said, at the meeting

It was mad to put so many hubs in Pembroke, and leave other areas with none, she said. “That seems kind of bananas to me.”

She had been told in the past – and been telling constituents – that they would get a fast-charge hub in Bushy Park, she said. Was that not true?

Darby said that there will be more phases, and Bushy Park is on that longer list.

He was willing to go meet people in communities about EV charging, he said. “I understand the problems that people face.”

A spokesperson for Dublin City Council said that it anticipates installation works on the project to start before the end of this year, with the equipment commissioned in the first quarter of the next.

"Work schedules are dependent on final approval of funding from ZEVI" – the Zero Emissions Vehicles Ireland unit in the Department of Transport – "and processing connections to the grid," they said.

[This article was updated at 9.20am on 1 October with responses from Dublin City Council about timelines for the roll-out.]