Building Codes Supporting EV Charging for Apartments

[GuyHall]

we know that we have to provide families in apartments the option of having an EV. We’re working on some potential building codes for new apartment complexes. We’d like to allow both shared L2 and simple L1 solutions. What would you like to see in a building code? Some questions and concerns that have come up include:

• Vandalism: How real should be the concern? How to protect against it?
• Wear and tear: Can NEMA 5-15/5-20 receptacles hold up to the daily outdoor insertions?
• Cost: need to be sensitive to the cost for builders, tenants and owners.
• Tenants: what best meets the needs of tenants? How do their needs differ from homeowners?
• Sharing: can unassigned charging spaces be practically utilized in an apartment complex?
• J1772: which is preferred in an apartment complex with assigned parking: J1772 or NEMA receptacle?

 

[jjrandorin]

I hope you get some responses on this, I feel its an interesting discussion that needs to be had.

Just off the top of my head, if its just "open stations" the complex is going to, either immediately or eventually, have to deal with people leaving their car there to charge "when its full" and not moving to allow others to charge.

No complex is going to want to deal with "so and so didnt move their car!" with just open stations, so some form of assigning the spaces would be best, in my opinion. It depends on how the parking situation is at the complex, but either having some spaces available to be assigned (either at some monthly cost if not able to sub meter easily or sub metered and assigned to whoever the space is assigned to) would be best.

Charging stations trump NEMA receptacles IMO, since its too easy to unplug something thats not yours in a NEMA receptacle. They should be generic charging stations so that they fit not only teslas but others, so J1772 stations.

just random thoughts off the top of my head when I read your post. Hope you get some other responses. Its an interesting discussion, even though I am not impacted by it as I have a single family residence and charge in my garage.

 

[msm859]

we know that we have to provide families in apartments the option of having an EV. We’re working on some potential building codes for new apartment complexes. We’d like to allow both shared L2 and simple L1 solutions. What would you like to see in a building code? Some questions and concerns that have come up include:

• Vandalism: How real should be the concern? How to protect against it?
• Wear and tear: Can NEMA 5-15/5-20 receptacles hold up to the daily outdoor insertions?
• Cost: need to be sensitive to the cost for builders, tenants and owners.
• Tenants: what best meets the needs of tenants? How do their needs differ from homeowners?
• Sharing: can unassigned charging spaces be practically utilized in an apartment complex?
• J1772: which is preferred in an apartment complex with assigned parking: J1772 or NEMA receptacle?

Well if you are talking about new construction I would do it right.
I would run separate 20 amp circuits @ 240 volt to each parking space - or at least the conduit.
Use heavy duty commercial outlets.
Depending on the size of the complex you would want to have an area(s) that have some dedicated 14/50 outlets - again heavy duty commercial. Wired for at least 5% of units with conduit to increase to 25%.
Being in California it might be good to have some dedicated Tesla cords.
Vandalism should not be a real concern.

 

[Rocky_H]

I would run separate 20 amp circuits @ 240 volt to each parking space - or at least the conduit.

I would tend to 2nd this motion as a good balance of cost efficient and reasonable speed for overnight charging in an apartment situation.

Charging stations trump NEMA receptacles IMO, since its too easy to unplug something thats not yours in a NEMA receptacle. They should be generic charging stations so that they fit not only teslas but others, so J1772 stations.

Well sure, but adding the stations blows up the costs of these kinds of projects. Also, they are a potential cost liability for getting damaged or broken and having to maintain some kind of service contract to get them repaired/replaced, etc. I figure the complex is doing the hard work making the circuit available, and that is generous enough. If you want to use it, bring your own cord.

 

[SSedan]

Why not let the free market handle this?
Why do we need another law compelling businesses to add costs?

 

[RandyS]

Why not let the free market handle this?
Why do we need another law compelling businesses to add costs?

One reason is that it costs a lot less to put in basic infrastructure (conduit, pull rope, capacity/room in a panel) up front rather than going in after the fact and trenching up a parking lot, etc. to put this stuff in later and trying to expand the equipment in the electric room or closet.

The second reason is that you would probably be surprised how little spare capacity is installed in multi-unit dwelling electric services. I do this sort of thing for a living for the local utility and I did a site walk at a not-very-old 10-12 story building downtown a while back that wanted to install charging stations, and the electric room absolutely had very little spare capacity and no physical space for additional equipment. The property manager shrugged his shoulders and said something like "we can't collect rent from a larger electric room"...I could tell his interest was not there. A few drivers were trying to organize the installation of some charging stations. There wasn't a solution they liked that was financially viable...

So after seeing this a few times, I'm convinced that there needs to be a happy medium where some basic EV charging infrastructure is required in new construction and then the actual charging equipment can be installed later. Otherwise, it is just too expensive to retrofit...My 2 cents worth...

Single family home folks have it easier, but here in San Diego, about half of our population live in multi-unit dwellings. So if EVs are going to make the inroads we want at the State level, we need to figure out a solution beyond single family homes....

 

[davewill]

The lower capacity the circuit, the less useful having shared spaces will be. A commuter charging on an L1 may need to have their car plugged in nearly the entire time they're home to make it work. If they come home to no open spaces a couple days in a row, they may suddenly be in trouble. Personally, I'd rather pay a monthly fee and receive a dedicated space.

It seems most sensible to do L2, even if it has to be low amperage circuits. A 20a 240v circuit will charge a car almost 3 times faster than a 15a 120v one with a very modest difference in installation cost.

As far NEMA vs J1772, as a property owner, personally, I'd rather take responsibility for maintaining EVSE equipment than rely on the renter's plugin EVSE to be safe and in good repair. Which kind of goes along with the notion of assigned spaces...I can charge extra rent to cover my extra expenses for maintaining equipment.

 

[GuyHall]

The lower capacity the circuit, the less useful having shared spaces will be. A commuter charging on an L1 may need to have their car plugged in nearly the entire time they're home to make it work. If they come home to no open spaces a couple days in a row, they may suddenly be in trouble. Personally, I'd rather pay a monthly fee and receive a dedicated space.

It seems most sensible to do L2, even if it has to be low amperage circuits. A 20a 240v circuit will charge a car almost 3 times faster than a 15a 120v one with a very modest difference in installation cost.

As far NEMA vs J1772, as a property owner, personally, I'd rather take responsibility for maintaining EVSE equipment than rely on the renter's plugin EVSE to be safe and in good repair. Which kind of goes along with the notion of assigned spaces...I can charge extra rent to cover my extra expenses for maintaining equipment.

Assuming assigned spaces, as a property owner, would you rather pay the extra cost and power infrastructure (panel, transformers, etc) for L2 with J1772 throughout or L1 outlets throughout? Would you see problems having tenants share J1772 L2 spaces?

 

[davewill]

Assuming assigned spaces, as a property owner, would you rather pay the extra cost and power infrastructure (panel, transformers, etc) for L2 with J1772 throughout or L1 outlets throughout? Would you see problems having tenants share J1772 L2 spaces?

As I said, I'd do low amperage L2 (20a), if 40a or better was too expensive. L1 isn't really a viable choice, IMHO. Besides being very slow and the outlets not really being designed for constant high amps, you might quickly have people using them to run other stuff, or using extension cords or cheap knockoff EVSEs... Creating unneeded liabilities.

I could see sharing a circuit between two spaces with a two plug EVSE that splits the load. Sharing one plug just sounds like a path to contention over who "needs" it more at any given time, and the landlord getting sucked into it.

As far as providing J1772 or NEMA, personally I'd choose J1772, but I don't see an overriding reason to require one or the other.

 

[cwerdna]

• Vandalism: How real should be the concern? How to protect against it?
• Wear and tear: Can NEMA 5-15/5-20 receptacles hold up to the daily outdoor insertions? ...
  
  
  
• J1772: which is preferred in an apartment complex with assigned parking: J1772 or NEMA receptacle?

1) Maybe. There are copper thieves which sometimes will cut cables, leaving only a stump. (e.g. Copper wire thieves - My Nissan Leaf Forum)
2) No. They'll need to be changed periodically as the outlets will get loose and then heat up, possibly melting. Many L1 EVSEs have a temp sensor in the NEMA plug so that would get tripped, unless someone uses an extension cord which wouldn't have such a sensor.

3) J1772 for sure. The problem with installing any sort of outlets (e.g. NEMA 5-15, 5-20, 14-50, etc.) is that now people will be leaving their expensive (several hundred $) EVSE vulnerable to being stolen or vandalized. Virtually all EVs/PHEVs in the US ship with a NEMA 5-15 compatible EVSE but I don't know of any ship ship with NEMA 5-20. For anything beyond that (e.g. 14-50, etc.) it's YMMV. Tesla stopped even including the NEMA 14-50 adapter w/their vehicles.

I had arguments/discussions with others here about NEMA 14-50 at Adding a charger into an AirBnB and Why ChargePoint is Terrible. Some people (not surprisingly) have a very Tesla-centric POV esp since Tesla used to include the NEMA 14-50 adapter (back then) and haven't had a ton of (or any useful) experience w/public or workplace J1772 charging. I've been using the latter since end of July 2013. Pre-COVID when I was working from my office, I would use ChargePoint CT-4000 J1772 EVSEs almost every working day.

Now, I'm mostly charging my Bolt (which I didn't have when I wrote those replies) via mostly free or discounted or cheap public DC FCing as I'd rather not pay Pacific Gouge & Extort's high rates.

I've been driving BEVs since the end of July 2013 and stopped having any ICEV in the household at end of Jan 2019. To this day, I still have no NEMA 14-50 or 6-50 outlet anywhere nor do I have anything that can plug into that nor have I ever plugged anything into one of those outlets.

I skimmed my old replies and will add some amendments. Many of our CT-4000 stations eventually developed some problems and required repairs. My employer took care of that.

One problem w/installing any sort of charging be it outlets, J1772 EVSEs or whatever is tracking and billing. If you want to do that, you'll need to install EVSEs that have that capability (ChargePoint isn't the only game in town). If you don't and the garage isn't one with secured access, it can be a free-for-all of random EV/PHEV drivers coming into charge, blocking residents' charging spaces, leeching free juice, etc.

For your sharing question, I can only speak from experience w/free work and public L1 and L2 charging. It would be great to have a centrally located EVSE, say a dual handle one located within reach of 4 to 6 parking spaces (2 or 3 on each side). However, I think you'd need to have the building establish a registry of plates, vehicles and contact info so that people move when requested or can be reached if they don't. We have that at my work.

Some public and workplace charging set it so that the 1st 2-4 hours are a regular price or free and then there are huge fees that begin at the 2nd or 4th hour. That encourages people to move but there can be jerks that just unplug and leave their car in place, blocking the spot.

 

[cwerdna]

I wanted to add to "One problem w/installing any sort of charging be it outlets..." but can't edit my post. If the garage has no access control, then EVSEs w/access control (ChargePoint allows that) would help. Nobody in the general public can use my work's L2 EVSEs. They'll get auto-denied. They have to add their CP account to a group and our admin has approve them.

 

[SSedan]

Charpoint can help manage access to just residents. I know of a local employer who has Charpoint units installed and to gain access employees had to email someone in the company who approved their access. This is paid use too not free.