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]
<mailto:[email protected]> wrote:
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
