Dive Brief:

• Blink Charging, a provider of electric vehicle charging equipment and services, announced Tuesday that it will work with Israeli smart city developer Ya’acobi Brothers Group to combine their technologies.
• The result will be a first-of-its-kind electric charging station integrated with light poles that can also offer flexible charging to enable smart city infrastructure. 
• The companies say the light pole charging stations can be integrated with internet of things (IoT) functionality, such as Wi-Fi, a camera, internet security and Blink's cloud-based network.

Dive Insight:

A Blink spokesperson told Utility Dive they are currently working to integrate the new technologies, and will then be deploying them in the U.S. and Israel. Ya’acobi Brothers Group holds the patent for the idea, which could turn streetlights into smart charging infrastructure. 

"This technology solves the problem of integrating EV chargers into a device that uses energy, such as light poles," the company said in an email. "The energy management system will allow optimization of the energy output, so that the EV chargers have ready and available access to energy."

Blink says that if you installed an EV charger directly onto a light pole without energy management, it would not be effective. "The energy management system will be able to optimize and redirect available energy throughout several installations at a time in order to make charging possible and efficient," the company said.

Widespread deployment of EV infrastructure "is mission critical to service a present and rapidly-growing global need," Michael Farkas, Blink founder and executive chairman, said in a statement. 

Partnering with Ya’acobi Brothers Group, said Farkas, will allow Blink to develop charging stations on a "global stage by integrating directly into city-wide infrastructure." The partnership aims to open new revenue channels for Blink by leveraging existing relationships with property owners and municipalities that may be looking to install smart charging ports.

Blink has developed a new technology that it says can slash the charging time for EVs by about two-thirds by supporting power outputs up to 19.2 kW. According to the company, that's almost three times the power output of the current generation of chargers.

In May, global safety certification company Underwriters Laboratories approved the fast electric vehicle charging station.