Special Report: 8.26.2009

Posted by Web Master on Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Electric Vehicles: Important To You?

Who will marshal EVSEs for installation?

Last week’s Special Report consisted of a long piece on some of what I learned at the PlugIn2009 conference and show. It covered a lot of (back)ground. As a writer, it was my judgment that you needed to know all of that before I hit you with what follows.

You need, I think, to know about EVSEs (electric vehicle special equipment). No one will use an extension cord to charge an electric vehicle via the (pre-existing) outlet in a garage; rather one of these specially manufactured charging stations will be necessary.

And if you check out most public parking places (at commuter train stations, in the multiple sub-basements of high-rise buildings, at shopping malls, etc.)—you’ll find no place to plug in at all. They’ll need charging stations, too, but of a different sort (an EVSE different from the one in your garage).

GM, Nissan, and other car makers are planning to roll out PEVs in the next 14-plus months. The Chevy Volt is a PHEV; Nissan’s Leaf is 100% electric (making it a BEV and also a ZEV = zero-emission vehicle). These companies aren’t kidding around; they’re not aiming at hobbyists or any other limited audience (i.e., they want to sell to a mass market, including hobbyists and enviros—and everyone else).

I talked with Mark Perry of Nissan; he has a business card with a title, but he might as well be dubbed “aggressive evangelist.” His take: “We’re not planning to sell just five of these in each metro area!”

Let’s envision a future (limiting ourselves to 2011-2020) in which electric vehicles become a significant part of the transportation option in specific metro areas. In these places, tens of thousands of PEVs (in each place) will be sold. Maybe more; maybe hundreds of thousands. Think about it: 200,000 PEVs sold over 10 years in a specific metro. Wow!

No mystery from here: The owners will want to charge their batteries. Sure the PHEVs can run on gasoline; but it kind of defeats the purpose of owning one of these if you run it exclusively on gas, doesn’t it? And BEV owners gotta charge every day (or stand still).

Here’s a big fear of the PEV proponents (the enviros and such, if you will) and the car-makers: Practicality. Perry said that the “ideal” set up would be to get a charging station (for a PEV buyer, at his house) in three days; a maximum of 10. If people buy these things and have to wait 55 days (I think he plucked this number out of the air)…it will be curtains for the PEV.

Word-of-mouth alone will kill the electric vehicle in such a case, he said. No one wins if an owner buys a BEV (from Nissan) and it sits, parked and unused, for two months.

Requirements for a Future With PEVs

What’s needed—and where.

Here’s what I heard about the charging stations:

1. Public PEV charging stations are necessary—if only as “billboards,” as one speaker said. People will want their BEVs to make it to work and back on electricity (of course, the PHEV drivers could resort to power-by-gasoline). So to make Nissan’s Leaf practical, the company needs charging stations located between where people work (the inner city) and where they live (the suburbs). This alleviates “charging anxiety”…which means the average guy/gal feels sure they’ll make it home without having to park the thing and hitch a ride.

2. What about putting charging stations at the places people work, and where they park before they get on a train to go to work? This seems less likely to me, for the simple reason that electric utilities really don’t need the public to ask for more power in the middle of the day. It’s not GOOD to ask for kilowatts at 2 p.m. on a hot summer day (and it’s not at all green!). I think charging stations at places people work WILL happen, but specifically where a location generates power on-site (for example, via solar PV panels on the parking lot roof).

• Note that the advantage of using solar PV to generate power and feed it to a PEV is that the PV panels generate DC, and the PEV’s battery pack wants DC. No need for conversion/adapters. Isn’t that a neat dovetailing?

3. PEV charging stations at malls are likely. For one thing, mall owners have figured out their advertising cost to attract one shopper is either $1.50 or $1.75 (I saw both numbers quoted—this is a favorite EV presentation statistic!). It will cost them $.50, or so it was said, per PEV-driving shopper. Therefore, it will be cheaper to build charging stations in the parking lot…or so the thinking goes. Plus, it gives the shopping mall a “green” patina, doesn’t it?

4. As a PHEV or BEV owner, you’re going to need one at your house. In reality, attendees were told, consumers probably will only need to recharge a PHEV—or BEV, for those brave enough to buy one—once every 24 hours. When people get used to owning this kind of car, it was said, they’ll come to understand they can make it to work and back home on one charge. They’ll routinely plug in at night and forget those charging stations in the suburban inner ring.

So that’s the situation. If you can embrace the vision of selling 200,000 PEVs of all sorts into a big metro area (Los Angeles, San Francisco…Dallas?) over a 10-year period, you’ve got to think about getting the infrastructure ready ahead of time. That’s where electrical contractors and distributors figure into the equation.

  

Quick Sidebar: What’s Needed Here

The necessary—and what’s omitted.

Some obvious notes:

1. I didn’t get into the environmental aspects of using PEVs instead of gasoline-powered engines. Many speakers mentioned the prospect of global warming and how EVs would help battle that; I could get into that, but I’d like to leave politics out of this blog for now. It’s not that I don’t “believe” in all this, it’s just that I am not writing for potential buyers of these cars. The job here is to educate people who will have to handle the chores associated with getting EVSEs distributed into the marketplace. Want something different? Read the GAO’s 53-page June ditty.

2. Fairly obviously, there is going to be a huge logistical challenge: Getting the charging stations (EVSEs) out into the marketplace in big numbers. Right now, this isn’t a subject for discussion (I didn’t hear it discussed, and I didn’t find anyone to talk with about it). But it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?

3. Someone must educate hundreds of contractors, electricians, and inspectors in any metro area as to which PHEVs—and especially the Nissan Leaf (a BEV)—will be sold. Will it be Nissan? The Electric Power Research Institute, a utility industry arm? NEMA? NECA or IEC? I have no idea. If anyone in the EV industry understood the electrical construction business, they’d figure out the electrical distributor was the proper, central place to get this done efficiently in just about any metro area.

4. I’m not sure how well reality can accommodate Mark Perry’s vision. Here’s what must happen to make a single-family house ready for a PEV:

1. The owner must purchase a car (obviously) AND a charging station (EVSE). Will he/she/they understand the need to buy the EVSE?  Will the car dealer sell the EVSE, too? I don’t know. If not, the dealer hands the buyer a list of recommended EVSEs and places from which they can be procured. That makes it a multi-step process, doesn’t it?

2. The PEV owner picks a contractor to install the EVSE at his house—from a recommended list (provided by the dealer?) of trained ECs.

3. The EC must pull a permit to install the thing.

4. Probably, an electrician has to visit the house where it will be installed, just to scout out the territory. Two trips?

5. Then an inspector has to inspect the installation.

Can all of this really happen in three days in most bustling metro areas? Or even in 10? Sounds difficult to coordinate over a short period of time, doesn’t it?

What Comes Next For The Distributor?

Don’t ignore PEVs…don’t count on them

Having lived 55 years, your humble correspondent can envision a future that’s totally unlike the past. Not 14 years ago, the Internet was not a part of his life. There was a time (believe it, younger readers) without the iPod, the microwave oven, HBO, and CNBC. AND: For 85 glorious years, the Red Sox were unable to win a World Series!

Will the PEV catch on? I don’t know. My guess is that global “peak oil” is here and if the price of crude oil can saunter around $70/barrel now—in the depths of global economic gloom—it could easily surpass $150 in a few years, if/when we finally have a synchronous world-wide recovery. I can see $300/barrel crude oil before 2020.

Factor $8/gallon gasoline into the equation (plus film of polar bears swimming to their deaths due to melting polar ice), and we get to a mass PEV market, don’t we? My conclusion is—well, maybe. I’ve read that the average PEV will cost $40,000, and I’m not sure who the heck has that (the two cars owned in my family, bought new within the past seven years, cost less than that combined). One must first assume:

1. An appetite for such cars; and
2. A willingness by consumers to overpay; and
3. Someone to finance the average citizen who wants to pursue a + b.

…that’s a lot to assume; perhaps it will never happen. If the PEV business is going to be launched and fail in the next decade, it won’t matter to you (or anyone else!).

But let’s assume that, for the 2011-2020 time period, it IS likely to happen, at least in affluent locales. In these places, electrical distributors are going to be the fledgling PEV industry’s go-to people. Yes, I see this happening, even though the people in the PEV business don’t know it yet, and haven’t talked with you yet.

For them, you are a neat package: An all-in-one-place for services and relationships that the PEV people would have to invent (were it not for the fact that you exist).

Think about it. You can marshal the equipment. You know the contractors. You have, for better or worse, credit relationships with the contractors. You probably regularly hold education and training events for your customers, and may even know the local inspectors (and perhaps, even, a few local politicos). You have relationships with major electrical manufacturers, increasing any stranger’s confidence in you.

In short, you’re perfect. If mass-market ownership of PEVs is really going to happen, I don’t see how it happens without you!

Minor Additions & Other Detritus

Pieces from an overflowing notebook.

I stopped by the booth of some pro-EV, anti-global warming people. I learned (among other things): In California, half the people who now own PEVs of some sort (think the Prius, other such models, or autos that someone expensively converted to run on battery power) also have solar PV modules on the roof of their homes.

Interesting moment during one session: A speaker (from David Packard of Clipper Creek) was identified as being from the only company that makes EVSEs that had managed to get them UL listed. In the Q&A, he was directly asked if he would explain how his company managed to get its product listed by UL. His answer: Nope!

One question is what happens in places—such as, oh, New York City—where folks don’t have garages? And: Where a lot of people live in apartment buildings? And in places like the townhouse community in suburban Virginia, in which I reside? First, you’re talking about a bunch of wires out there on the sidewalk/pavement, in all kinds of weather; that’s a bad thing. Experience with public charging stations, I learned, is that the 25-foot-long charging cables get run over a lot, resulting in damage to the connectors (oops!) and calls to the supplier for a replacement run. That’s expensive.

There’s more. I heard that, in Vancouver B.C., a law has been passed that any new multi-dwelling unit (apartment building), 20% of the parking spaces must be prewired to ultimately become PEV charging stations. That doesn’t mean the stations must be installed today; but the wires have to be put in the ground. (More copper use).

My question, upon hearing that: How long will it be until this requirement is everywhere? Or, at least, in places with townhouses and apartment buildings? And, afterwards, will there be a requirement to retrofit places like my townhouse community?

A speaker from Southern California Edison, Jim Kelly, spoke during a general session. I have this in my notes: “We assume 1.6 million EVs in California by 2020.” I’m not sure whether he meant statewide or just in his service area (I can write and listen, but I can’t catch everything). How many cars are there now in the state? I think it’s 25 million (the Census Bureau said CA had 36.75 million residents as of 2008).

In the strangest moment of the event, Kelly—speaking at the first session—had to go without slides and without a microphone. The reason: This event, sponsored in part by the electric utility industry, was hit by a local (Long Beach, Calif.) blackout! They got the lights back on, but it took a while to get the rest up (and some of the ceiling’s fluorescents were cycling, distracting the heck out of, at least, me). Yes, Long Beach is in SCE’s service area, and the irony was lost on no one.

74% of car trips are less than 40 miles per day, according to research. There was some talk that people would either own a gas-powered extra car (for vacation trips?) or end up renting such a vehicle. An example might be my annual summer drive from Oakton, Va., to Bethany Beach, Del., which is three hours or so. A 100-mile BEV would leave me way short of the sand (but armpit-deep in crabs!).

Important Stuff You Didn’t Find Here

Omitted for lack of space (sorry).

One thing to watch is that PEV evolution isn’t done yet. Some examples:

Fast charging—there are three levels of charging, slow, faster, and “fast charging.” With fast charging, the battery-only Nissan Leaf would obtain a full recharge in 26 minutes, I was told in that company’s booth. One problem: Fast charging is not here yet. I listened carefully and, while everyone knows this is in the plan, no one knows when it’s coming. Most of the talk is about properly setting up Level I and Level II charging.

V2G—utilities aren’t known as Dreamers, but here’s the dream: You have 200,000 vehicles in your service area with batteries, each with more of an electric charge than they need, all hooked into the grid during your peak demand period. If you need more power, you just…suck the power out of the 200,000 PEVs!

[Note: There also was a mention of V2H, which stands for “vehicle to house.” In other words, you charge your car at work, drive it home, and power your house from your car. This might be fantasy for the next, oh, five decades; and it doesn’t fit the things that most of us fantasize about…but then, most of us are not utilities, are we?

Better batteries—one problem is that the batteries with which the world is working need to be greatly improved. The Chevy Volt, for example, with its 40-mile range, will contain 400 pounds of batteries. The Nissan Leaf has about 615 pounds.

Batteries are the key not only for the PEV future, but also for things like solar PV and wind power. If your family is not home during the day, and the sun shines, what happens to all the power your rooftop PV modules are generating? You’re “selling it back to the utility.” This is just plain dumb. With no-maintenance batteries in your basement in sufficient number (and sufficiently advanced from what we have today), you could store the power from the PV and use it when you got home…even to recharge your vehicle!

I  also heard talk about:

The EV-1—the EV introduced by GM and then sent to a scrap heap. If you haven’t seen Who Killed The Electric Car?—well, maybe you’d enjoy the film.

One speaker called PEVs “appliances on wheels.” It’s an interesting perspective. I never envisioned my fridge suffering collision damage, though, as my Saturn Ion has lately.

Perry said the Nissan Leaf “will be mass-marketed by 2012.” For now, the company is picking specific metro markets where it will be selectively introduced; these are markets where the charging station installation process is being streamlined. Yes, that means Nissan is doing “advance work” on the ground in a handful of metros on electrical work!

 

	Joe Salimando of EFJ Enterprises is a consultant, web content provider, and wordsmith based in Oakton, Va. To contact him, call 703-255-1428. See also The EleBlog.
Personal Disclaimer: The appearance of the ambling pachyderm is indicative of the writer’s obsession with elephants, not his political leanings.
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