Plug-in Owners Plug In More

While that wasn't directed at me, I'll throw in my 2cents.
If by non-metered you mean home, as long as the majority charge overnight, yes, yes and yes.
Without any changes to the grid, we should be good to about 30-40 million EVs.
That is dependent upon charging overnight, which in most cases shouldn't be an issue.

 

To be honest, I am not sure how each EVSE supplier recoups their costs. Either they fork out the money, and recover it with each charge-up, or, as you mention, someone pays them a flat fee for each unit, and this person/organization is the one that recovers the cost per charge-up.
Either way, someone is going to lose. If you take the blunt-force approach and just build a massive # of stations, each a 'dumb' one, then there will be less sharing and less utilization.....it will take longer to recover the cost and that means more interest on your capex, etc.
If you build a smaller # of 'smart' stations (the cost of the software/networking is trivial, akin to smartphone), then you get more sharing (higher utilization) per station....you pay off your capex sooner. Less interest, etc.
The winner/loser will be the one who collects the per-charge fees to pay for the station; after all, it is in their best interest to pay as little for each station as they can while having as many cars charge up on it per day as is possible. Thus, small # 'smart' stations with high sharing/utilization per is the best ROI

Yup, a single smart station serving 4 spots would appear to have the best ROI for the station owner. Someone mentioned above a station that could potentially serve 6 spots in diagonal parking.

 

with the vast bulk of charging being done at home, off-peak, on a person's house meter, yes.

 

I meant public / daytime chargers, not at home or work. Sorry for not clarifiying

 

True. I've actually read that we could accommodate close to 100 million EVs with no grid changes.
But don't forget, a significant % of these will have emergencies or other urgent need to charge up in the middle of the day, away from home or work. The public charging issues will need to be worked out.

 

someone probably had the same concern about street lighting.

 

They sell hardware and provide the cell phone and billing service. Whoever installs the hardware sets the price and collects the money. (Probably some fee for credit card processing)

That was me. With the Leaf design you can get 8 parking spaces covered with one cord, based on the length of the ChargePoint cords. With the same configuration, the same 8 parking spots, 6 of those will fit a PIP, sometimes backed in. We've done this test at work. Actually one exactly positioned charger would probably handle 10 Leafs.

If all future EVs plugged in like the Leaf and you put all the chargers on central pillars every 4-6 spaces then each space would have access to at least 2 chargers maybe 3. I think this scheme makes much more sense than introducing another generation of chargers.

I'd expect that the real second generation will be fast chargers where you normally only plug in for 20-30 minutes, eliminating most of the not-yet-in-existance problem.

Mike

 

That is a very slippery fact.
I've been driving EVs for almost three years. In that time we have taken the gas burning car for distance factors, but never needed one for emergencies. I don't doubt that this will happen, but I do doubt it will lead to a significant percentage of people needing a peak hour charge.

As ranges of EVs improve, the need for daytime charging will decrease. However, as more EVs are bought, that small percentage of EV owners needing a charge will result in larger numbers of peak charging. Which will win out?

 

I think the issue here would be people that can just get back and forth to work who have an "emergency" such as errand ( dry cleaners pick the kids up lunch).. i.e. things not in their normal routine that can add enough to require daytime charging.

I think the more likely issue is people wanting a charge and not caring about the impact on the grid. People could choose not to use A/C (my house does not even have it) but perfer their comfort. Same will be true with the car.. plug in if work allows it for free. Get the smallest battery that work+home charging allows.

For this reason I'm against free charging at work, as it encourages undesirable behavior. (I'm not big on free chips/soda either, but that discussion belong in FHOP).

 

I propose a Shared load charging using that 4 parking space configuration 3PriusMike suggested. Each parking space will have a J7772 plug. If only one car is plugged in, the 30/32 amp charger will run at full power. When two cars are plugged in, the 30/32 amp charger will become 2 16amp charger.

When cars 3 and 4 is plugged in, it will be timeshared round robin queue (programmable to say 1 hour per 16 amp charging as an example)... so only two active at each time. The account could be deducted/accounted for on 1 hour charge as before. The discretion now is to let people know they could be charged at 16 amp L2 charging instead of 30/32 amp L2 charging.

 

If that was the definition of 'emergency' I would agree and further add that I agree with you completely on free charging being a bad thing for a number of reasons.

Frankly, charging early in the day is probably not an issue for the grid, just the late afternoon peak which would be a killer.

I suspect if the chargers charged $1/kWh during peak times, that would solve the problem.

Charging for parking in an EV spot, but charging would be free, outside of peak hours, might solve 95% of the ICE vehicles parking in EV spots.

Oh, as for the free chips, no problem getting rid of those, but don't you DARE take away the free donuts! :-P

 

For large employee parking lots, a simple load shedding appliance for managing peak loads would suffice. Having all the EVs shed from the load at the utility's command would address the problem. If V2G evolves, then having those vehicles plugged in will help.

 

I can answer that....it would be "as more EVs are bought, that small % of EV owners needing a charge will result in a larger # of peak charging."
The reason is that, even though range per $ paid for EVs is increasing, people will always buy the absolute minimum battery size needed to get home->work and back, -as drinnovation noted- with perhaps a small buffer to account for traffic, A/C use, etc. (and charging at work, especially if free, will lead to people buying even smaller batteries than if they could charge at home only).
It's simple consumer behavior.....it is more economical to buy the cheapest (i.e., lowest range) EV possible for your commute, and then deal with expensive public charging if (when) the day came up where you had to take an unexpected trip (or don't have a gas car), then it is the other way around.

 

True, but:
- the surge of EVs in coming years ensure the grid load will be several magnitudes higher than for streetlights
- streetlights turn on and off at fixed times; EV charging is random...more stress on grid
- streetlights run at night, where there is plenty of spare capacity; public EV stations would be utilized mostly during the day.....again, more grid stress

I could envision free charging if it were solar-powered (like Tesla's superchargers, which are avail only to Tesla customers).

But who would pay for it? Most likely it would be publicly funded, just as streetlights are. And therein lies a problem.
If people knew they could charge in public for 'free', they would stop charging at home. The public free charger would make a pretty good substitute for home charging (unless it was too slow, and parking-metered so not worth it).

But it does bring up a conflict.......not true with streetlights. No one substitutes the light in their home for that of a streetlight.

 

Yes, but what happens when the parking spots are shared in the workplace. And the last guy to get his charging time needs his EV charged in order to get home?

I'm just saying that these are conflicting interests. The employer is going to want to make sure the employee is happy. Period.

It is actually very easy to cut usage in a large office building by a few dozen kilowatts. Turn the (non-IT rooms) A/C up 1 degree. Turn off half the ceiling lights. Shut off all the conf room projectors and lights that people left on when they left. Put all the large printer/copiers into powersave/sleep. Turn off monitors not being watched.

Mike

 

Free public charging should be limited to 1-2 hours, then. But most will get a full charge at night, for severl hours.

Mike

 

I would advocate enough 120V outlets in the employee parking lot so that sharing a plug is not needed, perhaps 1000 out of 5000 parking spaces. An ideal design might be two 120V 15A outlets for every cluster of six parking spaces and the outlets on separate legs so that they could occasionally be combined for 240V 15A service with the proper adapter.

 

Had a team of students work on this last year, though we did lower charging rantes not the round-robin scheme.
We were working on a design for 4 heads.. Interesting issues as you get the cars to reneogiciate their levels. We did not want to go less than 8amps. But even that should be fine for workplace charing.

We also worked on a radically different "pay" scheme to support 120v EVSE charging, to make it much lower costs.
As we did this we did that we quickly found the limit is the power install. 20 outlets each with a "dedicated" 15amp circuit is a lot of infrastructure to install. Having 10 outlets on the same circuit is easy but not effective for charging. A lot of dedicated circuits mean new breakers/sub-mains and lots of thicker and clogged conduit.. making the install costs a lot higher that it might first seam.


I talked to two different EVSE companies, and neither though the two ideas I was pursuing with students were good ideas.. I expect it is because they viewit as a way to sell less products.. I kept trying to get them to see the install costs of new 240v lines/breakers for multiple 32amps services is more than the cost of the chargers, and if the customer can get more cars per "installed line" they might actually buy more, but did not get much update.

 

I disagree. Not only does that not fit what we have seen so far in EVs, but it also disagrees with what we have seen of car purchases for other factors.

Why buy a V-8 over a V-6? You would be spending less. Yet lots of people that don't need the V-8s still buy them.
Why get an giant SUV rather than a mid sized one?

People buy on the off chance they might, someday need the extra room, or power all the time.
Tesla offered the identical car with three different sized battery packs. The smallest pack, which by the numbers would be sufficient range for the greatest number of people, not only was the worst selling, it sold so few Tesla canceled it.

And don't forget, with a larger battery pack you not only get better range, you get increased performance.

 

What are sales numbers for Model S versus LEAF, factoring in release dates? (i.e., sales rates?)
We must keep in mind the model S is a 'novelty' and its price allows few compromises in range/performance.
LEAF has lots of ICE competition at same price point. But there can be no doubt that LEAF will handily outsell upcoming 'affordable' Tesla - or any other 200-mile EV

Because the v8 will get you just as far on a tank of gas (sometimes more, with marginally bigger tank) than a v6, at not much marginal cost.

Because the giant SUV will, again, get you just as far as a mid-size on a (marginally bigger) tank of gas...at not much marginal cost (certainly not 50% increases in cost, which is about the increment in going from a 100-mile LEAF to a 200-mile LEAF.)

This is true, but you are drawing the wrong conclusion. The people at Tesla's price points are hardly value shoppers. If they can spend the extra $ for more range (and performance) they will, The comparison is invalid because the only competition the Model S variants had is each other. There is (was) absolutely no other 60 kwh sedan to compete against.

That is true, but performance takes a back seat to overall value for the budget EV shopper. The question is not whether there are tradeoffs, as in v6 versus v8 or 100 mile EV versus 200 mile EV....of course there are, but the question is at what cost? For ICE cars, you currently get more 'bang' for not a whole lot more 'buck'. For the budget EV driver/commuter who has charging at home, and possibly work, the extra money for a 200-mile EV is not worth it, especially if they have a 2nd gas car. A 200-mile LEAF would also cost more than a Volt, so it would flop.
Any budget-EV driver out there who wants more range is better off getting an EREV.... it's cheaper. And as I mentioned earlier, I am firmly against PHEV/EREVs having priority access to daytime / public charging over EVs.

So, I see the EV market shaking out as follows:
(1) upper class people: able to afford 250+ mile EVs with no range anxiety or need for public chargers except on roadtrips
(2) middle class people: buying (home-charged) PHEVs such as Volt or Fusion Energi; no need for public charging with the gasoline backup
(3) everyone else: Focus, Spark, Fit, Fiat 500, LEAF, iMiev, Mini, Smart......it's all about cost, and ability to get to work and back based on home -and possibly work- charging. Public charging absolutely critical for unexpected trips. Also, since a lot of these people probably live in apartments with street parking or carports without outlets.

Don't forget that these 3 classes remain, even as battery prices drop. A LEAF will always be cheaper than a Volt, which will alway be cheaper than a Model S, regardless of $/kwh.

Also, it might seem that a 100-mile LEAF-class vehicle is sufficient for a daily commute, especially with work charging, but in places like California, people will simply move further (cheaper housing) from work, factoring in their tolerance for commute time (which is actually quite short thanks to carpool sticker.) I can think of many instances when I was living in California where I absolutely would have been hosed without public charging, if I were driving a 100-mile EV