electric car charging requirements

[Leviton]

Leviton electric car chargers

Leviton electric car chargers

I believe that Square D and Leviton, among others, are now offering EV charging stations.
I think they come in these flavors:
Level 1 is slow charge indoor.
Level 2 is slow charge outdoor.
Level 3 is fast charge - probably needs 3-phase

You should be able to find information on their websites.

Just for clarification, the charging ?levels? are not a function environment (indoor vs. outdoor), but is a function of power input/output. Initially, Level 1 and Level 2 Charging referred to AC Charging and Level 3 referred to DC Charging. However, the standards are still evolving. Today, the SAE J1772? standard defines charging levels as follows:

AC Level 1: 120V up to 16A (~1.92kW Max), single-phase
AC Level 2: 240V up to 80A (~19.2kW Max), single-phase
AC Level 3: not yet defined; proposed >20kW

DC Level 1: not yet defined; proposed 200-450 V DC, up to 20 kW (80 A)
DC Level 2: not yet defined; proposed 200-450 V DC, up to 80 kW (200 A)
DC Level 3: not yet defined; proposed 200-600 V DC up to 200 kW (400 A)

Currently, most production plug-in electric vehicles (at the moment NOT including Tesla) will be outfitted with the J1772 Charge Connector inlet, able to accept AC Level 1 and AC Level 2 Charging from the current lot of electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE). Some PEVs (like the Nissan Leaf) will also be outfitted with a DC ?Fast Charge? port conforming to the CHAdeMO standard, utilizing a TEPCO connector.

One other note: the current AC Level 1 and Level 2 ?Charging Stations? are actually just supplying AC power to the PEV, which has an onboard battery charger. The DC ?Level 3? Fast Chargers contain the charging units within and directly charge the PEV.

 

[nizak]

If that's the case, I would have to question the savings vs/ conventional fuel. You start spinning the meter at 90A single phase you will become the POCO's best friend.

 

[K8MHZ]

If that's the case, I would have to question the savings vs/ conventional fuel. You start spinning the meter at 90A single phase you will become the POCO's best friend.

At 15 cents per kwh, about 2-5 cents per mile.

If you get one of those 5 cent off peak deals from the POCO, 1/3 of that.

If you have solar panels and charge during the day, 0 cents per mile.

Instead of simply questioning, why not just do the math? Math is our friend.


3 hour charge, 80A, 240 volt = 57.6 kWh. At 15 cents, $8.64. At 5 cents $2.88

20 mpg car @ 4.00 per gallon = 20 cents per mile.

10 gallons (close to = 3-5 hr charge) = $40.00

 

[hillbilly1]

At 15 cents per kwh, about 2-5 cents per mile.

If you get one of those 5 cent off peak deals from the POCO, 1/3 of that.

If you have solar panels and charge during the day, 0 cents per mile.

Instead of simply questioning, why not just do the math? Math is our friend.


3 hour charge, 80A, 240 volt = 57.6 kWh. At 15 cents, $8.64. At 5 cents $2.88

20 mpg car @ 4.00 per gallon = 20 cents per mile.

10 gallons (close to = 3-5 hr charge) = $40.00

The savings is not quite that good because the people that buy electric cars already drive cars with 30+ mpg. Areas with high gas taxes will see a greater savings, while areas with lower gas taxes will see less. This also does not factor in the $5000+ cost of replacing the batteries in 5-6 years if your lucky.(Let alone the orignal cost of the vehicle that is double of a car that gets 30-35 MPG). The technolgy is just not there yet.

 

[drive1968]

After reading through that SAE standard, it seems the standard allows amps to be "up to" 80 amps. If the homeowner is going to be getting a car such as the Volt or Leaf, I don't understand the requirement to run an 80 amp circuit. It's my understanding that the electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) on most cars cannot draw more than 40 amps. If the homeowner is going to be getting a different type of car that can draw more, I understand it, otherwise it doesn't make sense to me.

As far as the economics of electronic cars, its seems clear that the homeowner would want to take advantage of the utilitiy's special rates. As a previous poster mentioned, PG&E requires dual meters to access that lower rate of $.05 kwh. The lower rate is only available in the middle of the night and only the charging station can be run on that meter. The homeowner is probably going to need pay for a service upgrade with a dual meter along with the $250 PG&E requires for an additional meter. Otherwise the homeowner is stuck with marginal rates frequently of $.41 or higher. So he either will need to pay a high upfront upgrade cost or high marginal rates.

 

[dexterg]

Pin and Sleeve

Pin and Sleeve

Pin and Sleeve plugs and connectors are available and rated for the load you stated.
I know P&S and Hubbell both make them.

 

[kbsparky]

I've been reading news items that indicate retailers like Best Buy are getting into the car charger market.

From what I can gather, they will employ their "Geek Squad" to perform installations, along with some electrical contractors, due to the licensing, permit, and inspection requirements.

Have any of you had any experience with this?

I can see loads of service upgrades to accommodate the increased demand of these electric car charger circuits.

I also wonder out loud if folks have considered what having an electric car will do to their electric bills. They might not have to buy as much gasoline, but those savings will be eaten up by higher energy bills ....

 

[sgunsel]

One of the biggest roadblocks to operating an EV is that there are 150,000 plus gas stations in the US but not many charging stations. But we don't need to utilize gas stations at all. They really want to sell beer and lottery tickets.

I see great opportunity for the fast food industry ("Like a few kilowatts with your burger?") to get into the auto charging racket. I just read an 80% charge can be had in 30 minutes for some plug-ins. That's a lot longer than it takes to pump 15 gallons of gas.

But with food and WIFI available, filling up the EV on the road would be much more pleasant. It doesn't look like there is all that much to a charging station - just add a card reader and go. If charging station cost is reasonable enough, they wouldn't need too big of a fleet to make it worthwhile. They all have the room to add a half dozen or so charging stations at one end of their parking areas.

 

[LarryFine]

I see great opportunity for the fast food industry ("Like a few kilowatts with your burger?") to get into the auto charging racket. I just read an 80% charge can be had in 30 minutes for some plug-ins. That's a lot longer than it takes to pump 15 gallons of gas.

If they had a sliding-contact mechanism, one could obtain a significant charge while waiting in the drive-thru-window line.

 

[Strife]

EXCUSE ME
If you want to compare an electric car VS a gas car, let's compare apples to apples.
An Electric car power wise, weight wise compares more to a 40miles/gallon car NOT a 20 miles per gallon.
Come one, I got a minivan with 6 cylinders and 7 seats doing 23 miles a gallon in the city. Almost 30 on highway.
So yeah, do your math.

At 15 cents per kwh, about 2-5 cents per mile.

If you get one of those 5 cent off peak deals from the POCO, 1/3 of that.

If you have solar panels and charge during the day, 0 cents per mile.

Instead of simply questioning, why not just do the math? Math is our friend.


3 hour charge, 80A, 240 volt = 57.6 kWh. At 15 cents, $8.64. At 5 cents $2.88

20 mpg car @ 4.00 per gallon = 20 cents per mile.

10 gallons (close to = 3-5 hr charge) = $40.00

 

[Strife]

Oh and let's not forget another thing about the math:
15c a KW? Are you including the 30-40% taxes to that?(I don't think you do as down here we have one of the cheapest electrical bill and when I add the taxes it comes over 20c a KW)
I didn't think so. So let's take taxes out of a gallon of gas going at 3.5 right now. That gives me a gallon for about 2.2
57KW solar power? from what I understood it cost about 500 for 100W solar panel, that's a lot of initial investment, around 25K doing my math(not sure about yours). And that's only the solar panels, what about labor to install that? what about batteries? 25K is a lot of gasoline I can buy (about 5 years worth while using my work van, not a 40 miles per gallon car, so tell me what's the warranty on those solar panels?).
And what's the warranty on those 50KW batteries? 2 years? 5 years? How much it cost to replace them?
Here's a last question: what do you do with all these batteries 4-5 years from now? Are you doing the math on that? Math's your best friend.

At 15 cents per kwh, about 2-5 cents per mile.

If you get one of those 5 cent off peak deals from the POCO, 1/3 of that.

If you have solar panels and charge during the day, 0 cents per mile.

Instead of simply questioning, why not just do the math? Math is our friend.


3 hour charge, 80A, 240 volt = 57.6 kWh. At 15 cents, $8.64. At 5 cents $2.88

20 mpg car @ 4.00 per gallon = 20 cents per mile.

10 gallons (close to = 3-5 hr charge) = $40.00

 

[sgunsel]

My current rate is $0.135 per kwh, based on total monthly bill divided by total billed kwh, in northern Ohio. You are right, though, quoted electric rates often do not include distribution, fuel surcharges, taxes, cost recovery, and who knows what other fees thay can dream up to tack on. The generation cost is about one third of the bill, but that is frequently quoted when touting how reasonable electrical costs can be. That makes it darned hard to "do the math" correctly.

 

[Open Neutral]

One supplier is Coulomb, with their ChargePoint system.

They look like a parking meter that got too much radiation and mutated.

http://www.coulombtech.com/files/CT2000-bollard-front.jpg

 

[PetrosA]

I wonder how long "off-peak" will remain off-peak. At some point, there will be enough chargers pulling 40-80A in the middle of the night that there will be a second peak, and I'm thinking it won't take long to reach that point, not to mention the harmonic distortion all that pulsing will produce...

 

[gar]

110325-2356 EDT

K8MHZ has correct costs for his area and my area of Michigan. My total bill divided by total KWH for the year puts the figure close to 13.5 cents per KWH.

I personally would not buy an electric or electric hybrid vehicle. My current vehicle is an F150 4X4. In cold weather from the house to the shop it gets about 10 MPG. This is a one way distance of about 2.2 miles and 5 stop lights, 10 deg F. Other running around town and warmer weather I am getting about 14 to 15 MPG. On the highway it is in the range of 19 to 21 MPG at 70 MPH. No cap on the box. I can haul big loads with this such as my 32 foot trailer.

If I had a satisfactory means of turning off the engine at stop lights, then my city mileage would push toward 20 MPG. If I had a hydraulic pneumatic hybrid system, then city driving probably would be about 25 MPG.

The Chevy Volt which is a long range hybrid electric vehicle can travel about 25 to 50 miles on battery only, and for this uses 10 KWH from the battery. That is $1.35 at our regular rates. Or between 2.7 and 5.4 cents per mile. And for now they pay no road tax. At 15 MPG with my F150 and $3.50 per gallon gas my cost is about 24 cents per mile. But I have more comfort, better seat and space, and much greater capability. I can drive thru 4 foot snow drifts on the highway and probably 2 foot uniform snow thickness. The Volt would probably have trouble on our small hills in town with a several inch snow. Generally I see all sorts of front wheel drive vehicles spinning their wheels on hills in moderate snow conditions. Also the F150 provides over 500 miles of range on one tank full at 70 MPH.

On the subject of power company rates at night. From a DTE representative that spook at recent energy forum here, the same night the GM Volt lady spook, said that night load is about 1/2 of the daytime load. They would be very happy to have a large electric vehicle load on the system at night. Much better utilization of their fixed cost plant facilities. Sat in the Volt that evening and I would not want to drive it. But note, even in 10 years there is not likely to be a big electric vehicle charging load on the grid. There will be localized areas where the distribution transformers will need to be replaced. But many of these are old and already paid for.

At some point electric and hybrid vehicles will have to be taxed. Money is needed for roads.

.

 

[drive1968]

<<<At some point electric and hybrid vehicles will have to be taxed. Money is needed for roads.>>>

If the government really wanted to get more money from electric car owners, it could reduce the tax subsidies. For example, every Chevy Volt customer gets about $7500 dollars in tax credit.

 

[kwired]

I was thinking about taxes early in the thread. If enough electric vehicles are on the road someday eventually there will have to be a method of collecting funds that are currently collected through fuel taxes. This can be complicated if trying to collect it through taxing the energy used to charge vehicles - how are you going to prove the energy did or did not go to a vehicle. I can see a lot of illegall chargings from a taxation point of view.

We have similar but not really that complicated issue with diesel fuel in farm areas. Fuel sold for farm equipment has a dye added to it so that if you are caught with the dyed fuel in an over the road vehicle you will be fined - the dyed fuel does not have the motor vehicle taxes added to it.

How would you ever monitor the energy put into electric vehicles for taxation and know there is not a lot of cheating done?

 

[PetrosA]

How would you ever monitor the energy put into electric vehicles for taxation and know there is not a lot of cheating done?

The separate meter designated for vehicle chargers would pretty much take care of that - and they could introduce yearly inspections from the weights and measures people who check gas pumps nowadays or POCO reps to make sure nothing has been tampered with.

 

[kwired]

The separate meter designated for vehicle chargers would pretty much take care of that - and they could introduce yearly inspections from the weights and measures people who check gas pumps nowadays or POCO reps to make sure nothing has been tampered with.

That is easy to do at a commercial site. How can you prevent untaxed energy from charging a vehicle at homes? What about charging a vehicle from alternate energy sources? I can see this being a lot easier to get away with than the system there is for off road diesel fuel today.

The taxes and fees that get added could easily be just as much or more than the energy charges. You don't think there will be a lot of people that try to find a way around this? Weights and measures guys now only have to check thousands of fuel dispensers for accuracy. They will have millions of homes businesses or vehicles to check if all the cars burning gasoline were replaced with electric cars.

The average person already has a hard time seeing just what they are paying for when they pay their electirc bill. They can visualize having something when they purchase 10 gallons of fuel. Sell them 10Kw/Hr of electricity they really don't know what they are buying. Disconnect their service for non payment and then they kind of realize somewhat but it is still not the same as buying something you can actually see if you want to.

When we start to see a significant number of electric vehicles on the road this will become a problem.

 

[jimport]

Motorweek just had a show about EVs that included typical charge times and the range obtained. A Level 1 charge was about 5 miles per hour of charge. Level 2 jumped up to 25 miles per hour at 240 volt. Level 3 was something like 80 miles per hour but you needed a 480 volt supply.

Here is a link to the story.
http://www.mpt.org/motorweek/autoworld.shtml