I am just back from 2 days at the 2013 EV Infrastructure Summit
Conference. It was great to hear from places like London (UK) and Oslo
(Norway) on what is working for them to encourage use of EVs, including
the installation and placement of EVSE stations.
This may have been captured best in a presentation by Ricardo Borba, a
fellow member of the Electric Vehicle Council of Ottawa, and the owner
of the first Nissan Leaf delivered in Canada.
To paraphrase his conclusions (specific to privately owned EVs).
1) the most important charging location is the one at home (usually
Level 2).
2) the next most important charging location is at work (Level 1 may be
sufficient and help address peak demand loading to some extent).
3) after that, what we need is fast charging stations at the periphery
of municipal areas and sufficient to support inter-city travel (say
every 50 miles / 80 km to support current Nissan, Mitsubishi, Ford BEVs
and GM extended range PHEVs). These should be fast charging stations
(e.g., 16-18 kW Level 2 or Level 3 charging stations).
4) Charging where I park works, parking where the charging stations are
(arbitrarily) located does not.
I have been talking for some time about 5 charging station segments to
be addressed as we roll out the infrastructure. This is largely based
on my personal experience in over 30 years of EV driving.
1) Home charging. It would be nice if installations were designed to be
friendly for visitors, because someday your friends will come to visit
and they will have EVs, too.
2) 'Homeless' charging. This is for people with an EV, but without an
on-property parking space that supports a charging station. This could
include townhome complexes, apartment building and condominium
buildings, or some homes in older areas where there simply is not space
for parking. This one will take some effort around education,
regulations, permitting, possibly electrical and building codes and
more. Also possible issues around etiquette and ensuring that such
spaces are available to assigned users.
3) At work charging. Employers that own parking spaces can generally
accommodate this fairly easily. In some cases there are incentives
available. Tends to be a little trickier where the employer rents their
premises, or parking is not part of the employment premises. This is
where commercial or municipal parking facilities come into play. In my
experience, in the past, this has been best addressed by the EV owner
making their own arrangements, as getting agreement on a small item by 2
or 3 corporate entities simply is not worth the effort.
4) Destination charging (stores, theatres, fitness centres, community
centres, customer-facing business and government locations where longer
visits are typical, schools, etc.). When I go to some place and expect
to be there for 90 minutes or more, I would like the option of charging
my vehicle. I am not interested in parking 2 miles away to charge my
vehicle and then finding some other means to get from my car to my
destination. In general, I think this should be Level 2 charging. I
also think we need to estabish some etiquette around using these spaces,
as they become a shared resource for the EV community (e.g., the
charging station can indicate that no current is being drawn - vehicle
is charged; is it OK to unplug a plug-in hybrid to charge a battery-only
EV if there are no other charging spaces available?). Personal opinion
- I prefer that the EVSE space be visible, but not in a preferred
location. Leave the preferred location for the handicapped spaces.
This way, the space is less likely to be ICEd. Putting the charging
station so that it can serve 2 or 3 different spaces can also help with
the ICE issue (and so can an extension cord). Until such time as EVs
are a significant part of the road-going fleet, putting in dedicated
charging spaces in preferred locations that will typically be empty is
just a red flag to the ICE owners that have to walk 4 or 5 extra steps
past the empty space, and more evidence that EVs are a failure. When we
are at the point that we have parking lots like Oslo with 50 charging
spots, and they are all filled by BEVs by 7 a.m. each weekday, then we
won't have to worry about this issue.
5) Long-haul charging. This is a fairly new arena for BEVs, dating from
the arrival of the Tesla and Leaf. (We did have some pioneers who
charged at campgrounds and other locations along their route, but in
general this was not a common practice.) I applaud Sun Country Highway
for showing the way in this regard. (https://suncountryhighway.ca/) I
think we need to have Level 3 (or high rate Level 2 - up to 18 kW) EVSE
at least every 80 km (50 miles) along routes where we want to support EV
travel. We are an urban population (over 80% live in urban areas), and
most of our EV driving (more than 80%) will occur in the urban region.
Still, vehicles like the Tesla expand the range capability, so why not
support the more typical EVs for inter-urban missions? I believe these
charging stations have to be located at service centres (restrooms,
coffee shops, restaurants), and we need to have at least 2 charging
ports at each (to provide redundancy in the event of failure and to
support multiple vehicles in normal circumstances).
Darryl McMahon
Past President, Electric Vehicle Council of Ottawa (on digest mode)
On 07/02/2013 1:04 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Message: 13
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2013 13:05:51 -0500
From: "EVDL Administrator"<[email protected]>
To: Electric Vehicle Discussion List<[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [EVDL] EV charging stations
Message-ID:<[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
On 7 Feb 2013 at 8:28, Peri Hartman wrote:
>The more I think about it, I agree that ESVEs should be located away from the
>favorite ICE spots. Why cause contentions?
This is a good point and I agree that locating EV spots far out in the
parking lot may reduce their blockage with ICEVs. However, I see two
downsides.
1. IMO, you really should reward people for making a more responsible choice
(EV), not punish them by making them walk more.
2. It takes more expensive copper wire to install a charging point farther
from the building.
Just matters to consider.
David Roden - Akron, Ohio, USA
EVDL Administrator
--
Darryl McMahon
Project Manager,
Common Assessment and Referral for Enhanced Support Services (CARESS)
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