EV charging "networks"

[LavaRand]

What is the status quo of electric charging and who deploys them and who pays them?

I've heard there are "networks" like "electrify america". What's that? Is it a utility? A private company? A co-op? How does it work economically / as a business?

If I want a charger at my work office, is there anyone that will come put in a "public" charger? Can I put one in and make money off of it? Like could people use it, and how would I bill them? If I put one of my own, can I keep other people from using it? Are there laws about what kind and who can use them?

 

[Brons2]

That's a lot of questions in one post. There's also the question of L2 AC charging at 240V vs L3 DC Fast Charging (DCFC).

I would personally call a company with a large national or regional deployment of chargers a "network" because you can find them in many places, and they usually have a website and an app for you to locate them. Most are private that I am aware of.

They are not technically utility companies, although some chargers are owned by utility companies, for example Florida Power and Light and Francis Energy are utilites that have regional networks of chargers in certain parts of the country.

In some/many cases there are partnerships for physical locations of chargers, for example at one time WalMart and Electrify America had an agreement and thusly you'll find many Electrify America locations at Walmarts. Now Walmart has decided to end that partnership and they are deploying their own Walmart branded chargers, which the rollout of is in the very early stages. Buc-ees seems to be developing a 3 way partnership with Mercedez-Benz and Chargepoint, as there are Mercedes branded ChargePoint chargers popping up at many Buc-ees locations.

How it works as a business, by my perspective as a user of such services, is that they mark up the cost of electricity 3 or 4 times beyond the local utility rate. The cost of the Electrify America nearest to my house is 56 cents per killowatt hour, whereas the prevailing local utility rates are not much over 10 cents per kilowatt hour. However, that said, many of the charging networks sell memberships, which in EA's case costs $7 a month and from what I understand lowers the cost at many chargers into the 30-40 cent per kilowatt hour range, so there is that caveat. If you're going on a long trip the breakeven point on the membership is reached pretty quickly, however, that does limit you to using the chargers of the network that you bought the membership with.

Most business charging is L2 AC charging, that I have seen, the premise being, that you plug in for most of the day or all day to get your battery charged, since it is slower than DCFC. The ones that are in the parking garage at my office are ChargePoint branded L2 chargers. The parking garage is fairly new since additional buildings have recently been constructed on the same plot of land alongside older existing buildings, so I imagine that the need for the chargers was foreseen by management. The rates at my place of employment at the time I started working there in August of 2022 were in the 30 cent range per KWH but at some point in the last year or so they've been dropped to the prevailing utility rate, around 10-11 cents per KWH. I guess people weren't using them very much. I have heard of people having free charging at work, as well. I'm very happy to get the local utility rate, not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Since these chargers in our garage are ChargePoint branded, they handle all the billing and so forth. You can use the ChargePoint app on the phone to activate the charger, they support NFC so you can just tap the back of your phone to the charger. I don't know what the backend on that looks like as far as who makes money. You don't have to go through a charging "network" though, you can buy standalone L2 chargers and hire your own electrician to install them. I'm not sure what the billing would look like in that case, but I would take a guess that there are credit card processing packages available to service chargers.

We have a challenge at my work that people just park in the EV charging spots even if they're not charging. The thing that has kept this from reaching the breaking point thus far is that they put quite a lot of chargers in the garage when they built it, I would say around 30. But if it gets to the point where non-charging EV drivers are blocking the spots for people who really need to charge, I would say the issue might come to a head. I make it a point to not block spots if I'm not charging and I have gone as far to write a work email to the facilities department stating that they need to take action on this, to no avail.

 

[2005jettatdi]

I go to the EV charging station in my garage. Seems to work just fine. For trips I have my twenty year old Jetta TDI or my wife's Accord Hybrid.

Companies need to establish a tow policy for cars parked in charging spots and not charging. All you have to do is see if the charging cord is attached.

 

[PandaBear]

It is actually easy to fix the people parking at a charging spot for not charging problem: add some bump / door mechanism that makes people parking there uncomfortable. It just need a "curb" that would raise or lower until you scan your card or phone. Something that won't scrape the paint but will definitely scrape your tire like a curb if you don't scan.

 

[y_p_w]

What is the status quo of electric charging and who deploys them and who pays them?

I've heard there are "networks" like "electrify america". What's that? Is it a utility? A private company? A co-op? How does it work economically / as a business?

If I want a charger at my work office, is there anyone that will come put in a "public" charger? Can I put one in and make money off of it? Like could people use it, and how would I bill them? If I put one of my own, can I keep other people from using it? Are there laws about what kind and who can use them?

It's the wild west out there when it comes to publicly or semi-publicly, as in customers-only. Really.

There are a bunch of networks out there like Electrify America and Shell Recharge (which may include Volta, which Shell bought). Many of those are for-profit where they're hoping to make money. I remember when Volta used to be free maybe for a couple of hours, although I never tried it.

ChargePoint is complicated. They manufacture/sell equipment and provide a billing network for owners of their equipment. However, they don't really install their equipment. I believe those can be started multiple ways, including reading a credit card, a ChargePoint card, or NFC using the ChargePoint app on a mobile device. The latter two would require setup with a credit card. Billing rates are set by the owner and may include the amount of energy plus the amount of time. Some might include some complimentary energy and/or time.



Tesla is fairly simple. It's tied to the owner of the vehicle and the charging system communicates with the vehicle to determine who owns the car and who to bill. Not quite sure how it works with newer equipment that's open to non-Telsa vehicles.

Tesla has a network of Level 2 charging that is provided by business owners with cooperation of Tesla to include them in its database. They call it "Destination Charging". It's mostly at no extra cost although it might require checking in with the management where it needs to be enabled. I've used that once where I simply plugged it in an it started charging.

I've gotten complimentary charging a few times. Once was visiting a winery in Sonoma County. Saw someone fiddling around with it and asked how it worked. Was told it was free so I moved the car to the last available plug and got about an hour of juice. Apparently the equipment (and maybe some of the installation) was at least partially paid for through a government program. I think the business provided the electricity although I suppose there could be tax credits for it. Also visited Redwood National Park once where I just mentioned driving an EV in passing to a park ranger. She suggested going to "park headquarters" where there was complimentary EV charging for everyone, I guess courtesy of the federal government. I found the place although it wasn't technically park headquarters, just an operations center that included maintenance and offices. I remember seeing it along the road, but they might have changed it after setting up a Shell ReCharge system in their lot.

I have a friend who bought an EV but didn't have home charging. Lives in a small condo (I think 4 units?) where the 120V electricity in the garage is shared by all the owners with a collective meter and was primarily meant for garage door openers and lights. Maybe a car battery charger. Obviously that's fairly small consumption so nobody complains about anyone monopolizing the usage. So plugging in a charger there wouldn't work. Was talking about installing a Level 2 charger (and the other owners can't stop that) hooked up the residential unit's meter, but I don't think it happened yet. But the hope was to charge at work where they had complimentary charging, but that went away when she got laid off. She's staying a fair bit with her parents now, so I think she might have at least set up a Level 1 charger in their house. Didn't ask, but she drives that car there a lot.

 

[PandaBear]

It's the wild west out there when it comes to publicly or semi-publicly, as in customers-only. Really.

There are a bunch of networks out there like Electrify America and Shell Recharge (which may include Volta, which Shell bought). Many of those are for-profit where they're hoping to make money. I remember when Volta used to be free maybe for a couple of hours, although I never tried it.

ChargePoint is complicated. They manufacture/sell equipment and provide a billing network for owners of their equipment. However, they don't really install their equipment. I believe those can be started multiple ways, including reading a credit card, a ChargePoint card, or NFC using the ChargePoint app on a mobile device. The latter two would require setup with a credit card. Billing rates are set by the owner and may include the amount of energy plus the amount of time. Some might include some complimentary energy and/or time.



Tesla is fairly simple. It's tied to the owner of the vehicle and the charging system communicates with the vehicle to determine who owns the car and who to bill. Not quite sure how it works with newer equipment that's open to non-Telsa vehicles.

Tesla has a network of Level 2 charging that is provided by business owners with cooperation of Tesla to include them in its database. They call it "Destination Charging". It's mostly at no extra cost although it might require checking in with the management where it needs to be enabled. I've used that once where I simply plugged it in an it started charging.

I've gotten complimentary charging a few times. Once was visiting a winery in Sonoma County. Saw someone fiddling around with it and asked how it worked. Was told it was free so I moved the car to the last available plug and got about an hour of juice. Apparently the equipment (and maybe some of the installation) was at least partially paid for through a government program. I think the business provided the electricity although I suppose there could be tax credits for it. Also visited Redwood National Park once where I just mentioned driving an EV in passing to a park ranger. She suggested going to "park headquarters" where there was complimentary EV charging for everyone, I guess courtesy of the federal government. I found the place although it wasn't technically park headquarters, just an operations center that included maintenance and offices. I remember seeing it along the road, but they might have changed it after setting up a Shell ReCharge system in their lot.

I have a friend who bought an EV but didn't have home charging. Lives in a small condo (I think 4 units?) where the 120V electricity in the garage is shared by all the owners with a collective meter and was primarily meant for garage door openers and lights. Maybe a car battery charger. Obviously that's fairly small consumption so nobody complains about anyone monopolizing the usage. So plugging in a charger there wouldn't work. Was talking about installing a Level 2 charger (and the other owners can't stop that) hooked up the residential unit's meter, but I don't think it happened yet. But the hope was to charge at work where they had complimentary charging, but that went away when she got laid off. She's staying a fair bit with her parents now, so I think she might have at least set up a Level 1 charger in their house. Didn't ask, but she drives that car there a lot.

Can your friend use kill-a-watt to meter how much he use and send a check every month to the landlord?

 

[y_p_w]

Can your friend use kill-a-watt to meter how much he use and send a check every month to the landlord?

I've dealt with stuff like this before with a townhouse. There were some basic utilities like lights and water used in the common areas, and that was paid for by the HOA, which we all paid into. I suppose as owners they could all agree to it, but the other issue would be PG&E and variable rate pricing.

 

[E365]

It didn’t deserve its own thread, but Tom Moloughney from the State of Charge YouTube channel said that in a few weeks he will get to announce a new charging network. He said it’s a new company with massive plans and cash. And that it might be a bigger announcement than IONNA (GM, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, BMW, etc.) And it’ll be the biggest charging news is 2025. “Tens of thousands” of chargers.

McDonald’s? Target? Walmart? I’m guessing it’s a current retailer. So much easier for them. Walmart just opened their new network, but haven’t really announced how big it’s gonna be or really any plans. Maybe they’ll announce a nationwide rollout of 20,000 DCFCs? Huge parking lots, no franchises, approaching $700B in annual revenue. They could easily do it.

Skip to 34:50 here to watch: