The San Francisco based electric and gas utility company, P.G.&E. (AKA Pacific, Graft and Extortion), has just won approval from the California PUC to construct a maximum of 7,500 EV charging stations within their utility jurisdiction, which is most of central and northern California. The cost to ratepayers will be $130 million. The original proposal was to construct 25,000 charging stations at a cost of $654 million, but this was cut back by the PUC.
The original request was for the utility to "wield wide-ranging control over the design of the physical facilities and the network support services", according to an article written by Geroge Avalos of the
Bay Area News Group that was published in my newspaper today. The reduction in charging stations was approved by a PUC Administrative Law Judge to not only reduce the impact on the utility's ratepayers, but also to prevent PG&E from obtaining a lock on the EV charging station design and locations, which would severely hamper competition from private companies.
I see two potential issues with this plan: One is that making the all of the utility's ratepayers fund the charging infrastructure and operation is not going to endear those ratepayers to electric vehicle owners. The other more practical issue will be how will the utility find 7,500 parking spaces to locate these stations in congested California where such spaces are at a premium in urban locations? Apparently, the plan is to locate many of the charging stations on private property, such as in front of businesses and at apartment complexes. That means taking these parking spots away from IC vehicles, which is going to be really tough at urban apartments and condominium facilities. And if they start using condemnation proceedings to acquire these stations that could get really nasty very quickly. I hope PG&E can deal with these and other issues so as to not result in public outrage against the EV stations and EV owners, but they have a reputation of being a "bull in a china shop" and they are already on the public's list of companies who they love to hate.
It is going to be very interesting to see how this plan unfolds in the future. I suspect that it will be making headlines every now and then as some poor property owner or business gets squashed to construct a charging station and IC parking spaces turn into charging spaces. And then we have the issue of enforcement. Right now in my area parking spaces set aside for EVs in shopping areas get ICE's all the time and no one does anything about it. Cops don't have authority to enforce parking regulations in shopping centers and the businesses don't want to hassle their customers by towing their vehicles. Details, details.
