Driving an EV pickup

[terrin]

Try to convince the City of that. Most (possibly all?) municipalities in the Lower Mainland adopted EV charging requirements where every single stall in the building needs to be roughed in (at minimum) for load management EV charging - I have not heard of any flexibility on this. I would absolutely love to just install a few dedicated/finished high speed chargers with built-in point of sale and then figure out some sort of ownership/maintenance contract (it would be great if BC Hydro got in on this, and offered to own/manage the chargers). However most off-street parking bylaws are a joke, and its the main reason the province used the legislative sledgehammer of Bill 47 to eliminate parking minimums for developments near transit.

For example: Most municipalities have fractional stall requirements greater than 1 stall per unit. Eg every 1-bedroom unit is required to have 1.2 stalls/unit, every 2-bedroom 1.5 stalls, etc (the exact number varies). In every development we have ever built we sell each unit with one stall as a baseline (sometimes larger 3-bedroom units will get x2 stalls). Any stalls we have leftover have zero market sale value and there is no demand for them - we typically end up just giving them away as a 'bonus' to any leftover units that are hard to sell - or give them to the strata as common stalls they can rent out. People are happy to take a free stall, but won't pay anywhere close to the actual cost.

Cities know that parking stall supply vastly exceeds demand (GVRD recently released a study showing that most parkades are at less than 50% utilization). Most cities will also offer you 'cash in lieu' option to eliminate stalls. For example, if you want to eliminate a stall in City of Burnaby your current cash in lieu 'contribution' is $26,718.50 (see current Burnaby Planning Fee Schedule). In Coquitlam it varies between $20-35,000/stall (see current off street parking bylaw). The rate theoretically based on cost of construction - which is now approaching $50k per stall. The exact cost of a stall is not that precise because you can't build single stalls - you build entire parkade levels - and the primary cost is dictated by ground conditions and overall parkade depth - so sometimes one additional stall can have a huge negative impact, or minimal impact. While it may cost $50k to build a stall, the actual 'value' of a stall is considerably less.

The market has demonstrated that people do not want the extra stalls (unless they are given away for free), but developers are compelled to build them as a bylaw requirement. The City determines the stall requirement through their parking bylaw but sets the number higher than the market needs/wants, but then offers a cash in-lieu option which is less than the cost of construction. Think about that for a minute. Why would the City ever reduce the parking requirement - it would be eliminating a potential revenue source. Think about who pays for that in the end - the home buyer. Any form of cash in lieu is such a huge conflict of interest when it is the city that sets out the requirement to begin with.

As a builder/developer - if you try to argue/explain this, the City just thinks you are trying to pull a fast one. They have zero self awareness about their own conflict of interest. They assume that if they take the stall off the table, its just a freebe for the developer. There is no understanding that housing cost may actually be linked to cost of construction (shocker!)

I can't wait to see the first group of apartments built under Bill 47, with no mandated parking requirement - and see if people are actually willing to pay the actual cost of $40-50k for the stall - or if you will start to see people who live near transit deciding to purposefully buy in lower cost buildings with no / minimal parkade. Even if the experiment is a failure for some reason I can't predict, it was still worth seeing what would happen.

Sorry if that's a bit of a rant and starting to get off topic. I'm a huge believe in EVs moving forward, and also a believer in the power of municipal planning - I'm not a 'blow it all up' kind of guy - but the current generation of municipal politicians/planners are peak Dunning Kruger. You see this in parking requirements, EV requirements, and tons of other housing issues.

The municipal politicians/ planners and associated crew like it just the way it is right now and don’t really appreciate the light being shined on their board meeting perks at the moment. Most already have built in salary adjustments based in part on inflation so the more the merrier.

 

[terrin]

Oh god yes. Except the service upgrade/relocation pain lasts for months and months, even if you're not paying the bill. I get that the electrical code is not to be messed with, many of those regs are there because someone died or was maimed. But the utilities' internal processes are just elephantine. In the South Okanagan we deal with FortisBC, City of Penticton and District of Summerland. The two latter are a bit easier to deal with due to smaller management tree, but Fortis is a blank wall of bureacracy. In the past I had acquired a small collection of invaluable phone numbers and emails of actual individuals who I could call and get answers to questions. But policy now prohibits such contact unless required in the strict adherence to proper procedure. Probably just as frustrating for them as it is for me.

“Management tree” and “wall of bureaucracy “ nails it. It’s worse than seeing four guys holding a shovel watch one suction truck dig a hole. It’s so bloated eventually we can’t feed it anymore.

 

[InterMechanico]

The notion that every condo owner needs their own charger doesn't play out. The strategy that works at the moment is to provide a few 20 kW AC chargers that operate like a public charging facility, EV owners pay as they go, no theft of common electricity. Have management and billing provided by one of the networks like FLO or SWTCH. The strata can recover its electricity use plus a small margin to pay down the upfront installation costs. The EV spaces are located near the electrical room to reduce home run length. Each condo building has its unique challenges, won't work for all.a

Try to convince the City of that. Most (possibly all?) municipalities in the Lower Mainland adopted EV charging requirements where every single stall in the building needs to be roughed in (at minimum) for load management EV charging - I have not heard of any flexibility on this. I would absolutely love to just install a few dedicated/finished high speed chargers with built-in point of sale and then figure out some sort of ownership/maintenance contract (it would be great if BC Hydro got in on this, and offered to own/manage the chargers). However most off-street parking bylaws are a joke, and its the main reason the province used the legislative sledgehammer of Bill 47 to eliminate parking minimums for developments near transit.

For example: Most municipalities have fractional stall requirements greater than 1 stall per unit. Eg every 1-bedroom unit is required to have 1.2 stalls/unit, every 2-bedroom 1.5 stalls, etc (the exact number varies). In every development we have ever built we sell each unit with one stall as a baseline (sometimes larger 3-bedroom units will get x2 stalls). Any stalls we have leftover have zero market sale value and there is no demand for them - we typically end up just giving them away as a 'bonus' to any leftover units that are hard to sell - or give them to the strata as common stalls they can rent out. People are happy to take a free stall, but won't pay anywhere close to the actual cost.

Cities know that parking stall supply vastly exceeds demand (GVRD recently released a study showing that most parkades are at less than 50% utilization). Most cities will also offer you 'cash in lieu' option to eliminate stalls. For example, if you want to eliminate a stall in City of Burnaby your current cash in lieu 'contribution' is $26,718.50 (see current Burnaby Planning Fee Schedule). In Coquitlam it varies between $20-35,000/stall (see current off street parking bylaw). The rate theoretically based on cost of construction - which is now approaching $50k per stall. The exact cost of a stall is not that precise because you can't build single stalls - you build entire parkade levels - and the primary cost is dictated by ground conditions and overall parkade depth - so sometimes one additional stall can have a huge negative impact, or minimal impact. While it may cost $50k to build a stall, the actual 'value' of a stall is considerably less.

The market has demonstrated that people do not want the extra stalls (unless they are given away for free), but developers are compelled to build them as a bylaw requirement. The City determines the stall requirement through their parking bylaw but sets the number higher than the market needs/wants, but then offers a cash in-lieu option which is less than the cost of construction. Think about that for a minute. Why would the City ever reduce the parking requirement - it would be eliminating a potential revenue source. Think about who pays for that in the end - the home buyer. Any form of cash in lieu is such a huge conflict of interest when it is the city that sets out the requirement to begin with.

As a builder/developer - if you try to argue/explain this, the City just thinks you are trying to pull a fast one. They have zero self awareness about their own conflict of interest. They assume that if they take the stall off the table, its just a freebe for the developer. There is no understanding that housing cost may actually be linked to cost of construction (shocker!)

I can't wait to see the first group of apartments built under Bill 47, with no mandated parking requirement - and see if people are actually willing to pay the actual cost of $40-50k for the stall - or if you will start to see people who live near transit deciding to purposefully buy in lower cost buildings with no / minimal parkade. Even if the experiment is a failure for some reason I can't predict, it was still worth seeing what would happen.

Sorry if that's a bit of a rant and starting to get off topic. I'm a huge believe in EVs moving forward, and also a believer in the power of municipal planning - I'm not a 'blow it all up' kind of guy - but the current generation of municipal politicians/planners are peak Dunning Kruger. You see this in parking requirements, EV requirements, and tons of other housing issues.

We installed basic infrastructure to each stall and then SWTCH chargers as required or desired. Load managed system. It really was pretty straightforward. The biggest headache was the BC hydro infrastructure and charger rebates; on both accounts they tried to cancel or short change the authorized rebate. In the end it all worked out, and those who wanted chargers have them in their stalls. it’s too late tonight for details but I initiated the project and saw it through to completion.

 

[sly_karma]

@InterMechanico - how many circuits, and what kV capacity do they share?

 

[Max123]

SWTCH chargers are the kind I was referring to - basically subscription based - centrally managed system. We talked to a different company vancouver based company but it was the same idea - at the time the monthly fee was eye watering. Curious what they were quoting?

If you want simplicity, use a dummy charger capable of networking to adjacent chargers. 4 chargers on a 40 amp circuit, charge capacity can vary up to 32amps (80%) depending on how many vehicles in the circuit are connected at any given time. Here's an old video explaining how to do this with a Tesla charger (the newer chargers can do it via Wifi instead of hardwire). simple - no monthly management cost.

https://www.tesla.com/en_ca/support/charging/gen-2-wall-connector/load-sharing

 

[sly_karma]

SWTCH chargers are exactly the kind I was referring to, where its basically a subscription based - centrally managed system. We talked to a different company, but at the time the monthly fee was eye watering. Curious what they were quoting?

If you want simplicity, use a dummy charger capable of networking to adjacent chargers. 4 chargers on a 40 amp circuit, charge capacity can vary up to 32amps (80%) depending on how many vehicles in the circuit are connected at any given time. Here's an old video explaining how to do this with a Tesla charger (the newer chargers can do it via Wifi instead of hardwire). simple - no monthly management cost.

https://www.tesla.com/en_ca/support/charging/gen-2-wall-connector/load-sharing

As long as they're capable of separating the billing and assigning costs to unit owners, the networked charger concept works well. You'll always get that one person who's suspicious that someone is getting some free electrons.

 

[Max123]

As long as they're capable of separating the billing and assigning costs to unit owners, the networked charger concept works well. You'll always get that one person who's suspicious that someone is getting some free electrons.

I'm not sure how companies are dividing the billing in practice. In BC you cannot allocate electrical costs to different users based on consumption unless you have a separate BC Hydro meter, or you are an approved sub metering company. I imagine that part of the benefit of a company like SWTCH is possibly that they are an approved BC Hydro sub metering company and use utility grade sub meters?

As I said, BC Hydro will provide stratas with one separate sub meter for your EV Distribution (not for individual circuits or meters), and then you can split the EV consumption charge by the number of stalls with EV chargers - but you can't bill based on individual consumption - regardless of whether or not the charger is capable of tracking it. Just because the app on your phone will show you how many KW were used, doesn't mean this information can be used for billing.

Sub metering is a real racket - any benefit you gain from a more equitible allocation is outweighed by the cost of sub metering.

 

[sly_karma]

I know there were some legislative changes made near the end of John Horgan's premiership that made it possible for non-utility entities to re-sell electricity. Prior to this, public charging operators could only charge by units of time - they weren't selling electricity, but rather a short term rental of a piece of electrical equipment.

I'll ask my Whistler friend about their arrangement with SWTCH when I'm there next month. He's the president of the strata and an EV owner himself. Their chargers are visible on Plugshare as a public charging location, charge is $0.25/kWh.

 

[Max123]

I'm genuinely curious since the regulatory landscape is clearly changing.

Keep in mind that if strata residents are paying $0.25/kwh that is really an extortionary rate. Its almost double the standard residential rate (around $0.14kwh). Also consider that stratas are billed at the commercial rate - if there consumption is high enough to qualify as a Medium General Service, they are eligible for $0.104/kwh.

Kind of what I was alluding to - a 100% premium for sub metering 3rd party management. That's a lot of cream being scraped off the top just for the privilege to be sure that the owner of the E-hummer is paying his fair share compared to the Fiat 500E.

 

[sly_karma]

It could be viewed as the residents paying slowly over time in exchange for being slammed up front for a sub metering system.

 

[Max123]

One place you will find developers installing residential EV Chargers is in new Rental buildings. In those case what I've seen is that they don't bother to meter consumption - they just charge a flat monthly fee (eg. $100/month for an EV charging equipped stall) which is high enough to cover worst case electrical consumption. The stall rental is a seperate contract from the suite, so not covered by the Residential Tenancy Act (and therefore not locked in) and cost can adjust over time based on actual overall cost/consumption.

While this may strike some as unfair/unequitable, because electricity isn't precisely metered - the main advantage is it allows mass adoption while still preserving most of the price advantage. When doing EV metering, its really easy to spend thousands on consultant / legal fees to chase down pennies.

 

[sly_karma]

Most EVSE for home use these days has wifi connectivity, and with that comes energy use monitoring and monthly/annual reports via an app. The only engineering required would be to size the circuit appropriately.

 

[Max123]

Most EVSE for home use these days has wifi connectivity, and with that comes energy use monitoring and monthly/annual reports via an app. The only engineering required would be to size the circuit appropriately.

Totally understand, but once you start sub metering and charging based on consumption you are wandering into some fraught regulatory territory. BC Hydro has a bulletin on this:

https://app.bchydro.com/content/dam/BCHydro/customer-portal/documents/distribution/standards/ds-rmr-advisory-multiple-occupancy-meter-requirements-and-resale-of-electricity.pdf

Just make sure you read the whole document and don't just stop at the part that confirms the thing you want to hear. Read it like a lawyer.

For example, it states that a building owner may sub meter to a tenant (great - allows sub metering for EVs), however it also makes clear that if you sub meter you are considered a re-seller of electricity and subject to section 9.1 of the BC Hydro Electrical Tariff (interesting... not sure what that means). It further states that since an owner in a strata building is not a tenant of the strata corporation, so this provision does not apply. However, it offers that a strata corporation may still be able to sub meter by becoming a 'public utility' and subject to the authority of the BC Utilities Commission (ok, that seems like it might get interesting...?). It even provides some cases where Hydro will directly meter a charger and then combine with a suite bill, but notes that this is not possible on load managed systems (the only systems that are viable in large scale stratas).

What does this all mean for your average strata corporation board trying to implement EV charging: 'call a lawyer to navigate this minefield' is the only truthful answer. The lawyer will answer that this issue isn't settled and they happily invite you to take the case to the utility commission (billed at hourly rates). The technology exists and may be as simple as an app - but when trying to implement at the scale of a 200unit strata building, the regulatory regime needs to be rock solid - which it just isn't.

The bulletin does provide one clear path with no regulatory issues: Do not meter based on consumption, just bill at a flat rate and none of these issues apply.

 

[kaelc]

Keep waiting for a towed this, cold effected this, Ford unlocked this, update! Trucks, Boats and Driveways all go together.

 

[InterMechanico]

@InterMechanico - how many circuits, and what kV capacity do they share?

There are (12) 208v 40amp circuits with up to 4 networked chargers on each. In practice, there are only 23 chargers installed, with a total of 11 owners actively using them. There may be a bottleneck in the future, although not for a great many years. If we find there is a number of users on a given circuit, those users can be redistributed to other circuits with less/no usage to speed things up.

If I have my math right, we have a maximum capacity of 72 kva. (200amp @ 208volt 3 phase)

Our building has an advantage in the way in is heated. Each unit has electric baseboard heating as well as gas fireplace heating. The potential demand for electricity required each unit to have a 200amp service, with the building service being able to accommodate that potential. In practice, pretty well everyone uses their fireplace as a primary heat source as the gas is included in strata fees, which left a comfortable margin to draw from when we completed our electrical load assessment.

The monthly service fee from Swtch is about $17 per charger in active use, paid by the user after the first 12 month free period. The user also pays for consumption by kw/h at a rate of 15 cents per kw/h which is 3 cents higher than the commercial rate we pay.

We haven’t had any complaints to this point about cost or insufficient capacity. Some owners initially mentioned the rate was high compared to municipally subsidized chargers around the neighborhood, but they all seem to charge at home now.

With regard to installation cost, the infrastructure cost for 48 units which included the sub panel and primary wiring, conduit and wiring to each unit/stall was 32k net of 30k rebate, $62k gross. This was paid for as a building infrastructure project with funds being allocated from the CRF. The net cost attributable per unit was something like $700 or so. Residents felt the expenditure from the CRF would likely achieve an increase in property value in excess of the $700 cost, so we’re happy to proceed in this manner.

The chargers were installed at a net cost of approximately $1300 each after a 50% rebate from BC Hydro. Residents purchased the chargers in one block which lowered the cost per unit and increased initial uptake

All in all, it was a fairly successful project and residents seem happy with the outcome.

For those without an electric vehicle, their units now include the infrastructure to add a charger which has some value to a prospective future buyer should they decide to sell.

 

[Max123]

@InterMechanico - great information - I assume this was a retrofit? With 200amp panels to each suite, the original load calc probably allowed for a bunch of extra 'future' loads such as hot tub, etc. Really nice to be working in a building that was over-built - so you have som capacity to play with. At $17/month, does SWTCH handle the billing/payment/collection or do they just to the load management and provide usage data to the strata for them to administer? At $0.15/kwh - depends if the strata account is a Small General Service or Medium General Service, but appears to include a small premium over the base Hydro rate - is this going to SWTCH or the strata corp? Regardless $17/month is definitely a better rate than we were quoted last time I checked.

In the interest of increasing the overall knowledge level I can share some numbers from my project: up to 88 stalls roughed-in for EV Charging (load management: 4 stalls per 40 amp circuit - 22 circuits), powed via a 600A main switch 3P@208V with x2 400amp sub panels. With load management, the building is designed to handle continuous 168kw from EVs. Building has electric suite heat/stoves. Common area heating / hot water is gas, but main distribution includes sufficient capacity for future conversion to heat pump hot water. Building has a 1000kva unit sub/transformer with a 208V/3000amp main switch.

Load management EV charging is the only way to make it work in a lot of buildings. If we weren't using load management, CEC would require in the range of 672kw load allowance for the EVs - which would have meant a second unit substation. The CEC is really punitive in terms of how you need to do your load calc for a conventional EV charger. Really tough to make any of this work in an old building unless it was overbuilt (which some were) - realistically those stratas could use any spare capacity to energize a few common area/shared stalls and that would be it.

 

[sly_karma]

Keep waiting for a towed this, cold effected this, Ford unlocked this, update! Trucks, Boats and Driveways all go together.

Not much to report from me. Cold weather means you run the heat more, like a gas truck. Short runs around town means you use more energy because you heat it up, then it cools off while you're inside, heats up again, etc. Same as a gas truck, this type of use is an energy hog for km driven. At least the energy used does actually deliver usable heat before the next stop is reached!

It did go to to the ski hill at lot this month, we had club events that had me up there 8 days in a 10 day stretch, either setting up or timing races. Wasn't especially cold, about -12 was the lowest I noticed. Last season I parked for a couple of hours when it was -34 and it didn't care, drove fine. Used my booster pack that day to start an ICE whose battery didn't like the cold.

I suppose the lack of posts from Lightning Owners about day to day driving could be considered a story in its own right. They just go, despite what the misinformation mongers say.

 

[Haverodwilltravel]

The lack of posts could be for a variety of reasons. But I suppose no news is good news.

 

[InterMechanico]

@InterMechanico - great information - I assume this was a retrofit? With 200amp panels to each suite, the original load calc probably allowed for a bunch of extra 'future' loads such as hot tub, etc. Really nice to be working in a building that was over-built - so you have som capacity to play with. At $17/month, does SWTCH handle the billing/payment/collection or do they just to the load management and provide of usage to the strata for them to administer? At $0.15/kwh - depends if the strata account is a Small General Service or Medium General Service, but appears to include a small premium over the base Hydro rate - is this going to SWTCH or the strata corp? Its defintely a better rate than we were quoted last time I checked.

In the interest of increasing the overall knowledge level I can share some numbers from my project: up to 88 stalls roughed-in for EV Charging (load management: 4 stalls per 40 amp circuit - 22 circuits), powed via a 600A main switch 3P@208V with x2 400amp sub panels. With load management, the building is designed to handle continuous 168kw from EVs. Building has electric suite heat/stoves. Common area heating / hot water is gas, but main distribution includes sufficient capacity for future conversion to heat pump hot water. Building has a 1000kva unit sub/transformer with a 208V/3000amp main switch.

Load management EV charging is the only way to make it work in a lot of buildings. If we weren't using load management, CEC would require in the range of 672kw load allowance - which would have meant a second unit substation. The CEC is really punitive in terms of how you need to do your load calc for a conventional EV charger. Really tough to make any of this work in an old building unless it was overbbuilt - realistically those stratas could use any spare capcaity to energize a few common area/shared stalls and that would be it.

Yes, retrofit for our 2006 building.

You’re spot on with the load calculation, and we’ve been fortunate with the buildings actual consumption vs engineered capacity.

$17/month covers all the administrative costs including billing the owner directly via the app and their payment method. The total revenue (or nearly all of it) based on usage is reimbursed to the strata corporation quarterly.

$0.15c/kwh is 3 cents above our cost, and helps cover any random expenses incurred such as a service call or the wifi connection (forgot to mention that, sorry) which is required for the networked chargers to function.

One more thing, the SWTCH charger software protocol is open source so they can be replaced as a service provider if they don’t perform. So far zero issues other than one random outage that lasted a few hours.

 

[sly_karma]

I used the SWTCH charger at my friend's townhouse complex in Whistler last week. Worked fine but took all night. 6.6 kW AC setup with two plugs. If a second vehicle plugs in, you're both sharing that 30 amp circuit. He tells me this was all the complex could spare from its common areas service. About 12-15 EV condo owners have EVs, and this setup appears to be adequate for their needs at this time. Most owners are recreational rather than residential users.

The strata provided the entire on site installation, including the two EVSE units specified by SWTCH. The network simply provides the connection and payment service, for a 10% commission and the $17/month fee. The strata council makes a surplus of almost 10 cents per kWh, which is steadily paying off the installation costs. Because they own all equipment, the strata has the option of switching to a different network if they so choose.