California to gain new EV charging stations under NRG settlement

You can't understand how the patronage system in california costs more and is less efficient Duh. IMHO NRG will spend considerably less than the settlement says. This is mainly pr for the gov, who is saying he is doing something to punish those that caused the california energy crisis. As I said NRG is doing about 1/4 of this project in texas, and asked permission from the government to do it. NRG expects to make money in the future selling power to business and residential users that use more because of their plug ins. Its good that some infrastructure gets built.

There is a standard on L1 and L2 from SAE, J1772, that everyone is complying with. Tesla has its own proprietary charger, but has an adapter for the standard. Tesla designed its charger before there was a standard other than the now outdated paddle chargers for legacy EVs.

L3 is a mess, with Chademo, Frankenplug (SAE), and Tesla. Tesla and frankenplug can support a higher power level, so its not so simple to retrofit chademo designed chargers for the other two. IMHO they can design chargers for the likely new standard, but provide the chademo plug. Then retrofit. In the future I expect chademo to die in the US. Nissan has said they can provide an adapter, as tesla now does for 1772. I would expect tesla to do the same. In the mean time why not 150kw instead of 90kw or 62.5? Build the plug for the future standards, not yesterdays. I agree a limited number of chademo's make sense, but 200 seems excessive.

 

Adapters do provide a cure for many charge formats. Even the old paddle chargers (required for decade-old RAV4-EV's) have a work around, thanks, to the good folks at modularEVpower doc com:


This let's RAV4-EV's plug into the newer - Chargepoint and Blink L2 EVSE networks. They carry their portable paddle charger, and plug it into the adapter's standard NEMA 14-50p plug. For owners of 10yr old EV's, it's a great way to take advantage of the growing L2 infrastructure.
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but don't cover every possibility.

 

I see people for battery cars, and I see people for CNG cars. Many people simply just want to get Amerca off of foreign oil. Why don't we just combine the strategies together? Toyota could have Prius CNGs and Prius CNG PHVs on dealer lots in six months from now. But despite the fact that I've see at least two or three CNG Honda Civics each week, at least two Chevy CNGs and a few CNG buses each week, I have yet to see a single CNG Toyota on the road. Why isn't Toyota doing anything about this???

Need a place to refuel? I can't speak for everyone, but here in Southern California, everyone has CNG in their house for heating.

It's called planning ahead. How many drivers stop at a random gas station because their gas gauge is on empty? And most cars have a 500-600 mile range! I plan ahead and make sure I have gas so I don't need to do that. If I had a BEV with a 125 mile range, I would charge it up overnight and have 125 miles when left my garage in the morning - plenty of miles for regular daily driving. And battery technology will probably be up to 150+ mile ranges by five years from now.

 

As stated earlier, I have no problems with combining alt fuels. Problems with NG right now is larger tank needed in order to get close to equivalent needs and as shown earlier, NG compared to Gas is a percent power of gas in equivalent size.

As for 'planning ahead'. Yes, you can do that, and again, not everyone starts at the same start point or start distance. You also assume that Refueling Point 1 and 2 will be open, there is always the possibility that they may also be closed or not available at that time. That is the whole thing about the quote of 'The best laid plans of mice and men...' comes into effect.

 

http://www.americas.fujielectric.com/sites/default/files/Fuji%20Electric%20-%20EV%20Overview%20120811.pdf

Here's a nice outline of Q.C. put to gether by Fuji. It's from the prospective of applications in the U.S. versus Japan. Note how (around pg 14) infrastructure can be set up similar to a vending machine - which I thought was kinda cool.

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There was also a patent put out by Sony about a month or so ago about identifying who was using electricity or how to allocate electricity via identification.

 

Before the thread becomes a Zombie ... found some good news followup on how the EV $$$ windfall will be used:

NRG reaching out to quell concerns in electric car charging network deal with California

This disclosure of sorts looks like there will be more responsibility in actually getting product to end users ... i.e. the money won't end up being another solyndera.

My favorite part is that the SAE doesn't appear to be winning their battle to implement the un-usable SAE Franken-plug they dreamed up ... for non-existent SAE format EV's:

The other thing I liked was Q.C. pricing:

Lookin' good -

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