Supercharger - Escanaba, MI

[glenhurst]

FYI, the 62kw DCFC in Norway, MI is up and running now, for those who have a Chademo adapter.

 

[sdoorex]

Is it actually online? It's not yet on ChargePoint's site and the photo on PlugShare from the news article does not show it active but in a test/setup mode and there are not any check-ins yet that have used it.

 

[sdoorex]

Norway is online today per ChargePoint. A bit more info on the pricing:

Price (Set by City of Norway MI)
$5.44 (estimate) for 2 hours
Price varies over time
Energy
Weekdays 12am - 8am $0.24560/kWh
8am - 8pm $0.31490/kWh
8pm - 12am $0.24560/kWh
Weekends 12am - 12am $0.24560/kWh
Min / Max Fees
Flat Fee $2.20 per session

 

[Thp3]

Electricity costs about $0.17 per kWh for home use (Consumers Power) in lower Penisula. I’m not sure how much more it is in the UP. Lots more grid costs and fewer people to pay for it. So likely higher cost for home usage.

 

[sdoorex]

Electricity costs about $0.17 per kWh for home use (Consumers Power) in lower Penisula. I’m not sure how much more it is in the UP. Lots more grid costs and fewer people to pay for it. So likely higher cost for home usage.

Here's the rate sheet for Norway's utilities:

Residential:

Service Charge: $13.00/mo
Energy: $0.1329/kWh
Cost Adjustment: -$0.01 to $0.02 per kWh
​

Commercial (<=40 kW peak demand) and Public Utility:

Service Charge: $35.00/mo
Energy: $0.1329/kWh
Cost Adjustment: -$0.01 to $0.02 per kWh
​

Commercial and Industrial (>40 kW peak demand):

Service Charge: $80.85/mo
Distribution Demand: $1.25
Either:

Demand Charge: $10.00
Energy: $0.0946/kWh​

Or:

Energy (Limiter): $0.1610/kWh​

Cost Adjustment: -$0.01 to $0.02 per kWh
​

I'm not sure what the Energy Optimization Plan Surcharge is or how it is applied.

UPPCO, who serves Houghton, Marquette, and Esky, looks a little bit cheaper.

 

[Thp3]

Just for completeness, the grid charge is often not disclosed in rate charges. Or are Taxes and fees. So there is likely an additional $0.05 -$0.08 per kWh charge for the full set of fees...

I think it’s split out since the public utility broke up into generation(kWh) and distribution (grid) companies.

 

[Big Earl]

Here's the rate sheet for Norway's utilities:

Residential:

Service Charge: $13.00/mo
Energy: $0.1329/kWh
Cost Adjustment: -$0.01 to $0.02 per kWh
​

Commercial (<=40 kW peak demand) and Public Utility:

Service Charge: $35.00/mo
Energy: $0.1329/kWh
Cost Adjustment: -$0.01 to $0.02 per kWh
​

Commercial and Industrial (>40 kW peak demand):

Service Charge: $80.85/mo
Distribution Demand: $1.25
Either:

Demand Charge: $10.00
Energy: $0.0946/kWh​

Or:

Energy (Limiter): $0.1610/kWh​

Cost Adjustment: -$0.01 to $0.02 per kWh​

I'm not sure what the Energy Optimization Plan Surcharge is or how it is applied.

UPPCO, who serves Houghton, Marquette, and Esky, looks a little bit cheaper.

I presume distribution demand is $1.25 per kW, so a 62.5 kW charger would incur $78.125 per month in demand fees, assuming the station was used at full power at least once during the month. Do you know if that’s the case?

 

[sdoorex]

I presume distribution demand is $1.25 per kW, so a 62.5 kW charger would incur $78.125 per month in demand fees, assuming the station was used at full power at least once during the month. Do you know if that’s the case?

I do not but that's probably not a bad assumption since that's how my local energy COOP, IREA, in Colorado works and I found two other city power companies that purchase power from WPPI like Norway, Preston, Iowa and Jefferson, Wisconsin that both have the demand charge as per kW.

Norway does state this on the rate sheet:

For each month, the customer shall be billed the lesser of 1) the amount of the Energy Limiter or 2) the amount for the Energy Charge plus the amount for the Demand Charge. This provision does not affect the billing of the customer charger, distribution demand charge and the PCAC, which are billed each month.

The PCAC is what I labeled as cost adjustment.

 

[mociaf9]

I presume distribution demand is $1.25 per kW, so a 62.5 kW charger would incur $78.125 per month in demand fees, assuming the station was used at full power at least once during the month. Do you know if that’s the case?

I'm not sure what the "Distribution Demand" is. It could be a flat fee monthly or a fee per kW of the total electrical service sizing, but it looks like it's not connected to usage. The "Demand Charge" for usage is $10/kW, so a single 62.5kW charging session would incur $625 in demand fees + whatever volumetric (kWh) usage fees were incurred for the month.

 

[specialgreen]

Norway MI operates its own municipal power utility, which uses WPPIenergy.org as "backup" to their own hydro generation. WPPI recommended this pricing to Norway. So I assume the pricing fits what WPPI would charge Norway, if the DCFC were used at a time when the city was relying on WPPI for power.

In truth, it's a bit academic: Norway generates 95% of the power used by its rate-payers at the Sturgeon Falls Hydroelectric Facility 5 miles away. So Norway's cost is "whatever it costs to run a 5mW hydro dam, run the city grid, and pay WPPI for backup". These prices that Norway charges its own rate-payers for meter, demand, per-KWH etc. are just made-up numbers which hopefully pay off their sizeable operations and fund their future projects. Imagine if Xcel, ALLETE or WE Energies owned a DCFC: you wouldn't read their tariffs and hope to see what their actual costs were.

 

[specialgreen]

Getting back to Escanaba, it looks like both Escanaba and Gladstone have municipal power, so either would be a good candidate for an EGLE grant. Gladstone's Downtown Development Agency has had some recent discussion of putting-in either L2 or L3:
Gladstone looks at electric car chargers

From a travel perspective, there are few driving routes through Escanaba that don't also pass through Gladstone.
Gladstone is 116/140 miles between Howard and Mackinaw, vs 108/148 for Esky, so Gladstone would be better there.
For travel to Marquette or Munising, Escanaba is better.
Assuming that Tesla builds an SC in Escanaba before 2030, maybe having a pair of 62.5kw's in Gladstone would give an alternative for people heading east.

 

[Tectonic]

Getting back to Escanaba, it looks like both Escanaba and Gladstone have municipal power, so either would be a good candidate for an EGLE grant. Gladstone's Downtown Development Agency has had some recent discussion of putting-in either L2 or L3:
Gladstone looks at electric car chargers

From a travel perspective, there are few driving routes through Escanaba that don't also pass through Gladstone.
Gladstone is 116/140 miles between Howard and Mackinaw, vs 108/148 for Esky, so Gladstone would be better there.
For travel to Marquette or Munising, Escanaba is better.
Assuming that Tesla builds an SC in Escanaba before 2030, maybe having a pair of 62.5kw's in Gladstone would give an alternative for people heading east.

The more, the merrier, but other parts of the UP might be even more useful overall for DCFCs under the EGLE program. I'm thinking places like Ironwood, Houghton, or maybe even Crystal Falls... Perhaps the power providers there make that more difficult.

 

[glenhurst]

Getting back to Escanaba, it looks like both Escanaba and Gladstone have municipal power, so either would be a good candidate for an EGLE grant. Gladstone's Downtown Development Agency has had some recent discussion of putting-in either L2 or L3:
Gladstone looks at electric car chargers

From a travel perspective, there are few driving routes through Escanaba that don't also pass through Gladstone.
Gladstone is 116/140 miles between Howard and Mackinaw, vs 108/148 for Esky, so Gladstone would be better there.
For travel to Marquette or Munising, Escanaba is better.
Assuming that Tesla builds an SC in Escanaba before 2030, maybe having a pair of 62.5kw's in Gladstone would give an alternative for people heading east.

I'll take a 62.5kw DCFC (or a pair) in Gladstone. While power utilities are usually a bit better about keeping their chargers in working order, redundancy in the area would be good. Part of the reason Tesla's SCs are considered more reliable is they always install several, such that if one or even a few fail, you can still count on getting a charge. I've had more cases than I'd care to think about where I've arrived at a single non-Tesla DCFC only to find it inoperable.

 

[rhumbliner]

I've had more cases than I'd care to think about where I've arrived at a single non-Tesla DCFC only to find it inoperable.

+1

 

[specialgreen]

I'm thinking places like Ironwood, Houghton, or maybe even Crystal Falls... Perhaps the power providers there make that more difficult.

Ironwood is a great location, but it's Xcel territory, and Xcel doesn't want to own 1/3 of a DCFC. The EGLE grant only price-matches what the utility kicks-in, up-to 1/3 of the project cost, so most grant winners have the utility pay 1/3, EGLE pay 1/3, and some other group (downtown development etc) pay the last 1/3.

- Ironwood is 108/145 miles between Duluth and Marquette and is Xcel
- Wakefield MI is 119/133 between DUL/MQT, and has muni power.
- Merriweather is 136/116 but it's basically one bar
- Bruce Crossing is 159/93 and is UPPCO

...so I think Wakefield could be a good location for an EGLE grant. Like Ironwood, it handles traffic going between Duluth/Ashland and either M-28/US-41 or US-2.

The EGLE grant requirements seem really tilted towards (a) cities with municipal power, and (b) multiple Chargepoint CPE250s per city... almost as if lobbyists from MPPA and Chargepoint wrote it. This isn't such a bad thing, but it will cause chargers to be located in (say) Norway MI instead of Iron Mountain, just because of the utility.