Charging Stations - options

[#47 (formerly 9 of 30)]

When I got my Empulse R, it came with a ChargePoint card and instructions on how to activate it. Got the phone app too. Problem is that ChargePoint has few charging stations in Southern California. so I looked up the Blink Network - many more charging stations available and a phone app also. Basic setup charges you only $1.50 an hour - no fees.
So my point is to have more choices for charging options. There may be others out there. Check to see what is available in your area so you don't have a limited area to ride in.

[flar]

Blink plus only charges $1.00 an hour and is free through 2013.

[Ain]

In addition to ChargePoint, you can look up stations with PlugShare and download their app for your smartphone.  It's useful to map out all the known charging stations in your area (user-submitted data, along with reviews):  http://www.plugshare.com

While I carry a ChargePoint card since Northern California is pretty well served (and many city stations are free), PlugShare is great for locating lots of other options.

[ttxgpfan]

Blink and Charge point are sharing info now so you should be able to use both at some point.

[Richard230]

This brings up a general question that I have been thinking about.  Last week, when I went for a ride with Shinysideup and we stopped at Alice's Restaurant to recharge while having lunch, we both needed their two available 120V wall outlets, one located behind the gas station and the other located behind a fence next to the realty office.  Since then two other electric motorcycle riders have mentioned getting together and going for a ride some day (flar and a Zero rider named Matt).  Which brings up a potential problem - getting four of us together would make too many electric motorcycles and not enough power outlets should we all want to charge up and continue our ride.  Someone is going to get shorted, perhaps not be able to ride further and potentially have range-anxiety all the way home. 

I can see this problem becoming more and more of an issue.  Expecting a business to revamp their electrical system and install more 120V or 240V outlets capable of dealing with ever increasing EV power demands doesn't seem to be too promising, given the relatively small amount of additional customers (who previously might have been there on their IC vehicles, in any case) that would attract and the low profit margin of a small business, such as a restaurant.

Even if Alice's (as an example) installed a couple of Level 2 chargers (as may happen some day), those wouldn't go very far with all of the Leafs, Teslas and other electric cars popping up in the area - along with the occasional electric motorcycle. Until some system of very fast charging becomes available and some way for businesses to be able offer these facilities, I don't see things improving in the near future - just getting worse.  (I might add that the gas station attendant at the Restaurant really doesn't look all that happy when we plug into the nearby outlets.)

So is there any solution to this potential problem?  Is it going to be "first come, first serve" and if you arrive late, you will be out of luck and electrons?  I don't have a solution, especially if your bike will take several hours of charging to receive a useful charge. What will we do?   

[Gavin]

When I'm going on a long ride and know I will need some charge I always call ahead to make sure I can use their outlet...Then I strap a "roll up" extension cord to the back of the bike...

this is because I never know if the outlet will be close to parking or not...and it has 4 outlets, so others could also charge...or the business can still have access to outlets.

the thing is every place has tons of outlets...you just might have to run the cord out a back door or window

I have found business to be extremely helpful...but that is now with electric vehicles being rare. in the future they might not let me run a cord out the window like they will now...but in the future I imagine there will be plugs everywhere...

Gavin




about 20 bucks...easy to throw in a backpack or strap onto the bike...25 feet lets me find outlets and park normally (though one restaurant had me park in their storage room to charge). No fast charging, but I can sit and eat a buffalo burger and get another 10-20 miles...

http://www.amazon.com/Woods-2801-Power-Caddy-Extension/dp/B000GAS3A8

[implovator]

This brings up a general question that I have been thinking about.

...

So is there any solution to this potential problem?  Is it going to be "first come, first serve" and if you arrive late, you will be out of luck and electrons?  I don't have a solution, especially if your bike will take several hours of charging to receive a useful charge. What will we do?   

Great thoughts. I know it's getting a little Lord of the Flies in my office. We have 5 level 2 charging stations. We have 12 parking spots in front of those charging stations. We have 13 Leaves. That's 14 users trying to get into 12 spots queueing up for 5 chargers.

We need more stations, but we know things are going to get complicated as soon as we ask for funding. We've got a good thing going right now, as the charging is free. So it's in our best interests to all get along.

We enacted three simple rules:

• If you need a charge, park in an empty spot with your charging door open.
• When a car completes, the owner should go out, unplug his car, and plug up the nearest car to that station with the charging door open. Then he moves his car.
• If anyone else notices that a car is finished, then he can unplug that car, close its charging door(s), and plug up the nearest car.

It's been working well, but every now and then greed kicks in.

• Case 1: Driver pulls up, notices a car is finished, plugs his car up instead of another nearyby car that has been queued up with the charger door open.
• Case 2: Driver queues up his car early in the day to charge even though it only needs to be "topped off". Sure it relieves their range anxiety, but what about the guy with the anxiety from a 10% SoC that needs to get home?
• Case 3: Some drivers are only charging at work instead of home because it's free at work.

[Richard230]

In South San Francisco, there is a new public parking garage that has two Level 2 charging stations that are (or at least were the last time I looked) free.  They have a 24-hour parking limit, so you can park there for all day and night without having to move your car.  The last time I looked, there was a Leaf and a Volt charging up and they looked like they had been there a long time.  I think the local workers with EVs park there all day, which is fine, except that anyone going there to do business in the downtown area will not be able to use those charging stations - and that was why they were installed, to attract well-off shoppers. I think when the city installed those stations they were really thinking about a "feel good" story in the newspaper and not how the stations would be used or how to regulate their use.

I think it is going to be a while before this charging infrastructure issue shakes-out.  One thing I am pretty sure of is that no one really wants to enforce any EV charging or parking in-front-of- station regulations at this time.

When I use a 120V outlet what I worry about is blowing a circuit breaker and having the business start thinking about me overloading their electrical grid and maybe reconsidering letting EV owners use their outlets to charge up , even if they are patrons.

[flar]

We have a similar issue at work.  We have 3 or 4 charging stations in several places but they were all installed in the 90s and are all some form of inductive paddle so we all crowd around the 2 110v outlets in each location (only 1 of the 3 or 4 charging stations in each area has 110 outlets so there is one outlet pair per charging area).  There are similar rules about leaving your charger plugged in with the cord near the outlet if you want to be plugged in and everyone has to learn every charging protocol to know if everyone's cars are done charging.  Similar issues with "How dare you imply that I shouldn't get to plug in my Prius and deny me my free electrons just because you need a charge to get home" attitudes - you'd think the community could get along better.

We've been asking for newer L2 chargers for a couple of years, but the requests are lost in bureaucracy.  Meanwhile the 110 outlets trip a breaker every week or so because the current they support can only marginally support 2 cars charging at once. 

Networks like Chargepoint can help.  I haven't been able to find specifics, but their "station owner" documents imply that they can install stations at no cost to the business.  I put a suggestion in for them to install a station at Alice's, but have no idea what happens with those suggestions...

[Shinysideup]

https://na.chargepoint.com/cpn_request_stations

Takes about two minutes to request a station.

Alice's address is:

   17288 Skyline Blvd  Woodside, CA 94062

Everybody sing along: You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant... even electrons.

[Shinysideup]

Meanwhile, the DOE maps shows these Level 2 stations near Alice's:

McDonald's
2905 Grove Way
Castro Valley, CA 94546
Phone:   888-998-2546

Historic Schoolhouse at Portola Valley Town Center
765 Portola Rd
Portola Valley, CA 94028
Phone:    888-758-4389

[flar]

That's pretty funny.  Plugshare must have a bad set of coordinates, it shows the McDonalds station right off of Tunitas Creek.  Did you grab a Shamrock Shake on your ride last weekend?    If you plot the address, btw, that's in Hayward.  Not sure you could get there from Alice's on half a charge.  It must be wrong in the DOE database as well.

The Portola stations are nice emergency backups, but I'd rather stay up on skyline and charge.

To that end, I just noticed a brand new station listed in Plugshare that I haven't seen before.  It's at 4 Linwood Way which is the road just behind Alice's, it sort of cuts off the corner from Skyline behind a couple of houses and the fire station and Alice's to La Honda Rd.  It has an L1 on the outside of the fence which looks like a J1772 plug in the picture, and it says "If you need L2, just give me a call".  I would expect this to be a "residential charger", but it is listed with the icon for a "public station".

[flar]

The google street view picture of the same fence (link) does not show the charger cord hanging there, so it is newer than the last time the google street patrol drove by.  If you spin the view around to the other side of the road you see the back of the fire station parking lot.

[implovator]

On a related topic, I just want to say thank you to Brammo for putting a level 2 charger on the Empulse. Realistically, there was no way to go on a recreational ride with the Enertia. And even with the Enertia Plus' range, that's still not much of a recreational ride if you want to make a stop to eat and charge. At level 1, your charge time during your stop could be longer than the saddle time for the ride.

With the Empulse's range and level 2 charging I can string together a pretty long ride with a reasonable 1-1.5 hour stop for lunch and a charge. Heck, even multiple 30 minute stops makes a significant increase in range.

[protomech]

Three use cases for charging IMO.

Overnight charging. 5-10 miles per hour. Bikes can get away with 110V. For most people, cars need 15A J1772. Also useful for charging at work. Every stock Zero bike falls into this category.

Activity charging. 20-40 miles per hour.  15A J1772 for bikes, 30+A J1772 for cars.  Able to pick up significant charge while out and about doing activities, such as sit down meals and movies. Brammo and the 30A J1772 cars (Focus EV, 2013 Leaf, Coda Sedan) fall into the lower end of this category.

Travel charging. Ideally 200+ miles per hour. Pretty much requires CHAdeMO, J1772 DC, Tesla Supercharger, or similar high powered offboard charging. 2013 Zero S ZF11.4 is around 100 miles/hour -  a good step, but I'd like to see double the charge rate. Nissan Leaf is around 120 miles/hour with CHAdeMO. Tesla Model S 85 is around 250-300 miles/hour.

Categories aren't absolute. Terry @ offthegrid traveled across the majority of the US using ~70 mile/hour charging. I think he's up to around 120 mile/hour charging now, though it requires connecting to two J1772 EVSE. But he's also more tolerant of planning a trip with the expectation of significant charge time.

I think Brammo could offer an Empulse with two onboard chargers with a bit of repackaging. I don't think it would be enough IMO to bump it into the next "class" of charging - 20 miles/hour up to 40 miles/hour is a nice improvement but it's not going to enable you to really travel cross-country. So perhaps the packaging compromise was not deemed worthwhile .. for the majority of owners.