Public Charging Etiquette - blocking public chargers

[Earl]

Public chargers are generally a sign of "doing it wrong" at least for locals. Huge amounts of public subsidy money went in to install 100,000 of them, most of which are barely used.

The effort should be to get chargers in apartment parking lots and office/commuter lots, and curbside in places where the homes do not have driveways or garages and don't commute. And of course, hotels.

The chargers need not be fast -- 3kw is way more than enough, but there need to be a lot of them.

Leave public charging for those very few who can't get charging in the above ways, and for tourists not staying in a hotel. This is the only way to make EVs what they are supposed to be -- superior in every way to gas cars when driving around town. If you charge at home or work, charging takes zero time out of your day. Public charging just involves parking where you don't want to, battling with others over chargers, and wasted time. Zero time is the way to go. Today is an abberation.

That will leave road trips as the only place where gasoline offers an advantage. Work is being done to minimize that. That's where fast charging is used. (You don't need fast charging in town if you have charging at work/home.)

I concur with the above but will add that in the case of supporting renewable energy sources, level 2 charging should be put in places where cars are parked during times when energy production exceeds demand. This way car charging may be used to utilize this excess energy.
It may call for greater charging speeds than 3 kW though, as well as some form of controlled charging times to enable the grid controllers to influence or control charging start/stop times.
I can envision a plan where EV drivers might be charged at $0.08/KWhr when the grid wants them to or ~$0.30/KWhr on driver demand. At work, one might set the car's computer to ensure it has 40 miles of range by 5:00 pm (to get home) and just leave it plugged in. It would make itself available for as much $0.08 as possible until about 2:00 pm, after which it might demand filling to 40 miles of range. I suspect that a Tesla would never use expensive electricity.

 

[bradtem]

I concur with the above but will add that in the case of supporting renewable energy sources, level 2 charging should be put in places where cars are parked during times when energy production exceeds demand. This way car charging may be used to utilize this excess energy.
It may call for greater charging speeds than 3 kW though, as well as some form of controlled charging times to enable the grid controllers to influence or control charging start/stop times.
I can envision a plan where EV drivers might be charged at $0.08/KWhr when the grid wants them to or ~$0.30/KWhr on driver demand. At work, one might set the car's computer to ensure it has 40 miles of range by 5:00 pm (to get home) and just leave it plugged in. It would make itself available for as much $0.08 as possible until about 2:00 pm, after which it might demand filling to 40 miles of range. I suspect that a Tesla would never use expensive electricity.

Yes, I have written that we must plan for the solar flip. Today, night is the time of surplus power, and also a great time to charge as you are sleeping.
In the future, the power surplus will be from 8am to 2pm, so charging needs to move to where you park in the day -- typically work, but also homes.

Those who can't easily charge then will need to pay more.

While faster is of course nicer, it costs more. I would rather have 100 3kw chargers than 50 6kw, if there are 100 cars that need to charge. People don't want to have to contend and be forced to come out and move cars.

Since most people just need 10kwh per day on average, what you do is just put in a smaller number of 7kw, and one or two dc fast.

 

[wwu123]

Reading a few of the forward-looking ideas in the recent posts, there is a local startup founded by Caltech grads called PowerFlex (now part of a larger company) that was trying to address some of these things, have installations at Caltech, our local school parking lots, and other public lots/garages.

Usually lots EVSE's (can include J1772 or even Tesla wall chargers) across many parking spots, EVSE's are relatively cheap. But load is shared, you can input into the app how many miles you need for the next few hours, it will allocate supply (including solar) based on need, adjust pricing TOU by whether power is from solar or utility), etc. At the schools, only staff are allowed to use during the day, allocating the free solar electrons; other times anyone can use, but at prevailing TOU rates.

In the retail areas nearby, there are always debates about building more public parking, I recall the lifetime opportunity cost of each new stall is like $50-100K since land is a premium. Shame that the Chargepoint/Blink/other EVSE networks charge so much those valuable spots sit empty at the busiest times, when EVSE's themselves are fairly cheap.

 

[bradtem]

Reading a few of the forward-looking ideas in the recent posts, there is a local startup founded by Caltech grads called PowerFlex (now part of a larger company) that was trying to address some of these things, have installations at Caltech, our local school parking lots, and other public lots/garages.

Usually lots EVSE's (can include J1772 or even Tesla wall chargers) across many parking spots, EVSE's are relatively cheap. But load is shared, you can input into the app how many miles you need for the next few hours, it will allocate supply (including solar) based on need, adjust pricing TOU by whether power is from solar or utility), etc. At the schools, only staff are allowed to use during the day, allocating the free solar electrons; other times anyone can use, but at prevailing TOU rates.

In the retail areas nearby, there are always debates about building more public parking, I recall the lifetime opportunity cost of each new stall is like $50-100K since land is a premium. Shame that the Chargepoint/Blink/other EVSE networks charge so much those valuable spots sit empty at the busiest times, when EVSE's themselves are fairly cheap.

EVSEs actually can be super cheap and can even be cheap with accounting. Really all an EVSE is is a cord and a relay. The smarts can all be in the car if it can identify the EVSE it is at.

If every car were as smart as a Tesla, which is able to talk to the cloud, you could set up a protocol to make all EVSEs plug and charge with full current control and accounting without much smarts in the EVSE, though it would be useful to have current measurement in the EVSE to prevent cheating by the car (taking more current than the pilot wave tells it to take.)

When a car pulls up to an EVSE, it should photograph the QR code on the EVSE with its front or rear camera, and ask its HQ or other app it works with to negotiate charging with the EVSE provider, including how much current, billing etc. The car can even provide a relay for encrypted messages to/from the EVSE which would not need internet connectivity -- the car would do the job. It could all be very cheap and very fancy.

 

[roblab]

Not trying to hijack this thread, but let me ask a question (kick me out if not appropriate). If you are at a free public charging station and you see someone is full, is it OK to unplug them?

You can't, without destroying their charge port. The plug is physically locked into the port when charging.

A note would be the place to start. They can come unplug and move their cars, or Tesla might step in and charge them $X.XX for parking at a charger. They may be ignorant, selfish, or just thoughtless, but they can change.

 

[Earl]

Reading a few of the forward-looking ideas in the recent posts, there is a local startup founded by Caltech grads called PowerFlex (now part of a larger company) that was trying to address some of these things, have installations at Caltech, our local school parking lots, and other public lots/garages.

Usually lots EVSE's (can include J1772 or even Tesla wall chargers) across many parking spots, EVSE's are relatively cheap. But load is shared, you can input into the app how many miles you need for the next few hours, it will allocate supply (including solar) based on need, adjust pricing TOU by whether power is from solar or utility), etc. At the schools, only staff are allowed to use during the day, allocating the free solar electrons; other times anyone can use, but at prevailing TOU rates.

In the retail areas nearby, there are always debates about building more public parking, I recall the lifetime opportunity cost of each new stall is like $50-100K since land is a premium. Shame that the Chargepoint/Blink/other EVSE networks charge so much those valuable spots sit empty at the busiest times, when EVSE's themselves are fairly cheap.

Good point. Their pilot projects at Caltech (photo)

and JPL have 67 Level 2, as well as 3 CHAdeMO (with Tesla adapter) and 3 CCS stations enabling intelligent charging management. It's a model for future workplace charging.

 

[bradtem]

You can't, without destroying their charge port. The plug is physically locked into the port when charging.

A note would be the place to start. They can come unplug and move their cars, or Tesla might step in and charge them $X.XX for parking at a charger. They may be ignorant, selfish, or just thoughtless, but they can change.

Tesla connectors are locked into the port. J1772 can be removed, including from the J1772 adapter on a Tesla. Once charging is done, it actually should be allowed. For example, at dedicated Tesla chargers it would be nice if the cars knew they were at such a charger and released the connector once full or after a tap on the door. The problem is you don't want to release a Tesla Mobile Connector, as it can be stolen. A Tesla Wall Connector is OK to release -- but this would only make sense in public stations like hotel destination chargers. It would be nice at hotels if there are two cars parked by a charger, and somebody (driver of 2nd car, or hotel employee) could swap the plugs. Right now Teslas don't talk to wall connectors to communicate what kind of charger it is and what the policy should be. That could change.