Charging Strategies Will Have a Lot To Do With Electric Vehicle Adoption
By John O'Dell January 29, 2010In brief:
- EVs will sell better if people know they can find chargers for them.
- Costco, McDonald's, Starbucks and others can use EV chargers to attract customers.
- Pre-wire buildings and parking structures to reduce cost of future charger installation
- Timing the charging of EVs is key to preventing grid overload.
By Terril Yue Jones, ContributorWASHINGTON - Want to get people interested in EVs? Put electric vehicle charging stations at Starbucks and McDonalds. Pre-wire parking structures before they're built. Install chargers in the parking lots of large retail stores, such as Costco and Wal-Mart, where people spend a lot of time.
San Francisco has installed a bank of EV chargers on street near City Hall.
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Adoption of EVs will be slower in the absence of a decent charging infrastructure, most agreed, but the way that infrastructure is planned and developed can also have a big impact.
Charging cars while parked on streets presents numerous challenges such as scalability, vandalism, and, in colder climes, battling snow drifts.
But installing EV charging stations in covered parking structures solves many such issues, said Watson Collins, manager of business development for Northeast Utilities Systems, New England's largest utility.
"Progressive parking garages, workplaces and retail locations can differentiate themselves with EV charging for free," Collins said. Some parking garages, for instance, already sport juice bars and are charging stations, and EV charging "hot spots" that Costco has set up in California can attract customers and build loyalty.
Parking dynamics have always had a mixed effect on electrification of cars. In suburbs where most houses have garages, owners can install their own charging stations or simply plug their EVs into standard outlets for a slow overnight topping up.
Recharging EVs at night is popular because the cars are idle and electricity rates are lower.
But in cities such as San Francisco and New York, where few homes have garages and most cars are parked on the street, often quite a distance from their owners'
homes, such recharging isn't feasible.
"Today we're sending a signal: That we want parking lots to have one station or two stations," said Richard Lowenthal, president of Coulomb Technologies, a California-based manufacturer of networked chargers.
In Vancouver, he noted, a parking structure recently was constructed with conduit and wiring built in. When EV charging stations are installed in the future, the cost will be about $500 each instead of the typical $2,000 bill to retrofit a parking structure for a charging station.
The industry is also promoting workplaces as alternative locations for EV recharging, while cars are parked during a work shift before being driven home. Charging stations could also be deployed at places such as restaurants.
In Arizona, charging stations are going up at Starbucks coffee shops, shopping malls, grocery stores and other employment and retail locations.
"The government isn't going to support the charge infrastructure forever; we have to come up with something that's win-win," said Don Karner, president of eTec, a designer and manufacturer of charging stations.
The Phoenix-based company last fall received a $100 million grant from the Department of Energy to deploy 5,500 charging stations in five states.
But it's not just location, location, location. Timing of charging can be key as well, according to Will Einstein of the office of Emerging Technologies and Climate Change at Puget Sound Energy, the largest provider of electricity and gas in the state of Washington.
Puget Sound Energy experiences peaks in power use on cold January weekday mornings, when a lot of heaters and hair dryers get turned on. That prompts utility executives to ponder whether it is best to encourage EV charging just before those peaks, at night, or to shift emphasis to middle-of-the-day charging.
"We really need to keep in mind what the customer wants: Cost-effective rates, reliable service, fully charged vehicles when needed, timely process for installation and connection, and smart and convenient charging systems," Einstein said.
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