Charging Solutions for Country Club

[NCAviator]

I live in a private gated community in North Carolina www.mountainairnc.com. We are looking for a good solution for residents and guest when they are at our country club and our lodge. We have a restaurant also.

Have checked with Tesla and they will provide the charging device, but we have to install and pay for electricity. No way to bill to the user. That solution would only work for Tesla vehicles.

Talked to Chargepoint. Their level 2 solution ($7,500) and DC solution ($39,000) are expensive and then there is an annual fee. We could charge the user, but given the very small number of current users would be a long pay back.

Are there any companies installing charging stations at their cost? We don't care if we get any money for the location. Just want to provide the service. Ideally it would be a fast charge solution so that more users could use the equipment. Not charging long period.

 

[TexasEV]

DC fast charging price would be prohibitive. Why not take the Tesla HPWC as they’ll provide it for free through their destination charging program, and also install a Clipper Creek J1772? For example the HCS-50 which provides 40A is only $635.

If you don’t need to charge the user for electricity, the charging solution can be an order of magnitude less expensive than an overpriced an underpowered ChargePoint.

 

[Az_Rael]

Have you talked to any other charging station companies like EVGo or Blink? I think Blink offers what you are looking for as an option.Electric Vehicle Charging | United States | Blink CarCharging Get on PlugShare and see what other networks are in your area and get bids from them as well.

 

[swaltner]

I've been looking at options that allow chargebacks for our facilities group at work. They have budget for a handful of systems to be installed. I also didn't really care for the high cost of the ChargePoint systems. A few options that I found that aren't as expensive, but also aren't as full-featured as the ChargePoint systems include:

- WattZilla sells a Key Lock option WattZilla | The most powerful, dependable and durable charging stations for home or business. for their EVSEs. This would be a purely manual process, so it would be unwieldy in reality. You would get the key from the office, unlock/activate the charger, then report on your usage and settle the bill. A single 80-amp EVSE with this feature installed would cost $2,084. This is barely better than an totally uncontrolled EVSE that would cost $500, so it's not really a viable option.

- WattZilla sells a credit card reader option for their systems. They use a credit card reader from Nayax. Someone on TMC was installing these out west. The limitation of the integration on this system is that you are charged on a per-minute basis until you come back and press the end button on the reader. If you're not careful, you could get some unexpected charges on your credit card. Cost of the system for a single 80-amp EVSE is $2,573 ($2,294 to WattZilla and $279 to Nayax for the reader). You would have an $8/month fee for the credit card reader and they would also take 5.95% as a processing fee.

- Nayax sells their own 40-amp EVSE listed at EV Meter. This system costs $4,000 for a dual-station EVSE with credit card reader. It supports billing by kWh delivered (if allowed by state law). It would have the same $8/month fee and 5.95% processing fee. I don't have any experience with this EVSE, just having learned about it earlier this week when I was discussing the integration of their readers with the WattZilla systems.

 

[Graffi]

KISS: Keep It Simple Stu....

The easiest and cheapest solution is to first determine the number and location of the EV charging parking spaces. Then run 50 amps lines to each space. Install both a 240v NEMA 14-50 and a 120v GFCI 20a plug, both in outdoor weather-proof boxes.

Every EV driver carries the required EVSE in the trunk of their car. No need for you to supply them. If you do accept TESLA's offer of a couple of their units, then use them on a couple of slots for TESLA only parking. Any extra Teslas can use their own EVSE to plug into the NEMA 14-50 outlet. Any other EV can plug into either the 240v or the 120v outlet. By having both outlets connected to the same wiring for each spot will save you running additional lines for the 120v outlets. As a matter of fact, you could even designate a number of charging spaces as 120v only and only run one line for each two spaces. This way you could could run 10 240v lines, using two for TESLA only, three for 240v/120v combo, and ten spaces for the 120v only by placing the outlets between each of the 2-space pairs.

Any EV using the 240v outlet will cost you about $1 per hour and the 120v will cost about $0.20 per hour (depending on your electricity rate - yours will probably be cheaper). In either case, the cost is electricity is really small in relation to purchasing and installing the expensive EVSEs. jmho

 

[swaltner]

Sorry, I missed that you weren't necessarily wanting to get reimbursed for the electricity. I keyed in on ChargePoint and skimmed the rest of what you said. If you don't care about getting reimbursed, my personal preference for charging stations are:

ClipperCreek HCS or LCS systems - Commercial EVSE: Public, Fleet, Workplace Charging | ClipperCreek

OpenEVSE Advanced Series OpenEV Store - Products You could get the fully assembled version or the kit and save about $80 each for an hour or two of assembly time.

While outlets are fine if you're trying to go on the cheap, basic EVSEs are cheap enough that they really should be considered. Most commercial installations will have pretty high installation costs (trenching from the building to parking lot), so the marginal premium of $400 for an EVSE over a plain outlet could get lost in the noise.