installation + ongoing costs for public L2 & DC FC stations

[cwerdna]

Post articles, sources, and info about typical costs to install public L2 stations along w/ongoing costs (e.g. maintenance, electricity (in cents per kWh, demand charges, etc.), repairs, etc.

I'll start.

http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2014_04_29_pulling_back_the_veil_on_ev_charging_station_costs
http://web.archive.org/web/20140701... Comparison Study (25kW vs 50kW) 7-3-12.pdf- these are for their 25 kW vs. 50 kW CHAdeMO DC FCs

As I posted at http://www.mychevysparkev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5434#p5434

Information provided by Nissan at Plugin 2013 indicates average cost for hardware and installation at dealers for the DC FC is $49K.

(The above are of course CHAdeMO and would likely include the $15.5K hardware cost of http://nissanqc.com/.)

edit: Updated Fuji Electric link since the page to point to archive.org version since the original URL is now 404.

 

[TonyWilliams]

As I'm probably the only regular poster who actually owns part of a DC charger installation (the first one on the ChargePoint network), let me first say that the method of charger communication with the car (CAN, PLC) and the physical plug on the end (Supercharger, CHAdeMO, CCS Combo1 or Combo2, GB/T, etc) has very little affect on the cost of installing a DC charger.

What does matter are where the utility service is and how big of a transformer is needed. If a bunch of trenching through concrete is required, the cost skyrockets.

Then, the electrical utilities vary a lot as to costs for hook up, permits, and the single biggest variable is demand fee charges.

Demand fees are a surcharge to the normal electrical tariff that can add thousands of dollars to the ongoing cost of a DC charger installation.

 

[tigger19687]

emand fees are a surcharge to the normal electrical tariff that can add thousands of dollars to the ongoing cost of a DC charger installation."

Is this all over or just in Cali ?
Just curious.

I was thinking that most of the chargers were on Private property (office building, supermarket, mall etc) So wouldn't they be the one doing it all ?

 

[cwerdna]

emand fees are a surcharge to the normal electrical tariff that can add thousands of dollars to the ongoing cost of a DC charger installation."

Is this all over or just in Cali ?
Just curious.

I was thinking that most of the chargers were on Private property (office building, supermarket, mall etc) So wouldn't they be the one doing it all ?

Demand charges are NOT a California utility only thing.

At least in PG&E land (covers much of Nor Cal), they're not on residential schedules but are on certain types of commercial schedules. But, I've heard of some places outside of CA where they even put demand fees on residential!

 

[TonyWilliams]

emand fees are a surcharge to the normal electrical tariff that can add thousands of dollars to the ongoing cost of a DC charger installation."

Is this all over or just in Cali ?
Just curious.

I was thinking that most of the chargers were on Private property (office building, supermarket, mall etc) So wouldn't they be the one doing it all ?

Demand charges are NOT a California utility only thing.

At least in PG&E land (covers much of Nor Cal), they're not on residential schedules but are on certain types of commercial schedules. But, I've heard of some places outside of CA where they even put demand fees on residential!

Demand fees generally start at 20kW over a 15 minute average. The cost for these charges is so varied that it might take a book to detail them all.

But, in a place like San Diego, if I pull 50kW once per month for 15 minutes, the charge is about $1000 per month, excluding the actual cost of electricity.

 

[cwerdna]

emand fees are a surcharge to the normal electrical tariff that can add thousands of dollars to the ongoing cost of a DC charger installation."

Is this all over or just in Cali ?
Just curious.

I was thinking that most of the chargers were on Private property (office building, supermarket, mall etc) So wouldn't they be the one doing it all ?

I found http://www.nstar.com/ss3/business/rates_tariffs/rates/rates.asp for Boston. Search for demand.

I see

B1 - General (with a demand meter) (G-1) (MDTE 130 (PDF))
This rate is for small commercial/industrial customers with demand of less then 10 kW. Demand meters are mandatory for all new customers with either three-phase service, or single-phase service exceeding 100 amperes. Customers with a demand exceeding 12 kW in any month will be placed on rate B2.
...
B2 - General (G-2) (MDTE 131 (PDF))
This rate is for medium-sized commercial and industrial customers where the service voltage is less than 10,000 volts and the monthly demand is greater than 10 kW but less than 200 kW.

I'm definitely not the right guy to explain how demand charges are calculated but I have heard of the typical 15 or 30-minute windows. Googling for how demand charges work electricity turns up numerous references.

 

[TonyWilliams]

The way it works at San Diego Gas & Electric is this way (dollar amounts are estimates):

19.9kW - no demand fee surcharge
20kW - $26 per kW = $520 monthly
50kW - $26 per kW = $1300 monthly

 

[Chocula]

With those rates, it might make sense to install batteries or something in the charging station to buffer the load so you never pull more than 19 kW from the grid. One of our data centers uses flywheels to provide power between an outage and the generators starting up, the others use batteries.

 

[FutureFolly]

Demand charges seem like the biggest barrier possible to commercial DC FC stations. During the slow demand acceleration period when DC FC stations see minimal use breaking would be almost impossible.

This actually seems worth lobbying state representatives in California about. Exempting DC FC stations from demand charges until their actual energy consumption exceeds a certain number of kwh seems reasonable or some number of kWs must be deducted from the stations normal demand charge calculations.

The more EV friendly California gets the more likely EV manufacturers will make more large EV related investments in the state, Tesla especially. Only supporting the sale of EVs is strategically weak because lack of charging infrastructure turns off a lot of potential buyers. Demand charges also limit how many businesses will be willing to support L2 charging for their employees.

 

[TonyWilliams]

With those rates, it might make sense to install batteries or something in the charging station to buffer the load so you never pull more than 19 kW from the grid. One of our data centers uses flywheels to provide power between an outage and the generators starting up, the others use batteries.

Of course, Tesla is already using batteries (and solar) at some Supercharger stations.

Here's a CHAdeMO with batteries:

http://www.jfe-eng.co.jp/en/news/2011/20110928.html


JFE Engineering has already marketed a rapid charging system called RAPIDAS which enables 80% charging in 30 minutes. This charger, which uses a battery as an internal charger... By holding power receiving capacity to 20 kW or less, it has won high marks from customers who are not able to increase their power receiving capacity. In commercializing the Super RAPIDAS, JFE developed a hybrid type which also provides the function of the existing RAPIDAS.

 

[cwerdna]

What the heck? I made a post at http://www.mychevysparkev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3753&p=7555#p7555 (in this thread) and I noticed it was deleted as page 2 vanished. It had this below.

Re: Tesla's Superchargers: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-25/tesla-building-250-000-chargers-for-model-s-drivers-in-highways.html

Tesla’s rocket-shaped superchargers are designed to work only with versions of Model S with 85-kilowatt-hour battery packs that allow the cars to go more than 200 miles per charge.

The devices cost about $250,000 each and can power four to six cars at one time, Musk said. Tesla plans to install 100 of these superchargers at a cost of $20 million to $30 million over the next three to four years, he said.

I stumbled across http://www.umtri.umich.edu/content/Brendan.Jones.Nissan.Marketing.PT.2012.pdf which on page 44 gives of range of $23K to $45K to install a DC FC ($10 to 12K for a commercial grade EVSE).

Long ago, Nissan bragged they got a CHAdeMO DC FC's cost/price down to below $10K. The $10K basic unit at https://web.archive.org/web/20120716030656/http://nissanqc.com/ vanished long ago w/any reason given.

 

[cwerdna]

http://avt.inel.gov/pdf/prog_info/DCFCSeattleEVworkgroupJuly2014.pdf on slide 10 from http://avt.inel.gov/librarybydate.shtml lists DC FC installation and demand costs.

The mean cost for installation of 99 DC FCs, not including DC FC hardware was $20,848. There's also a table of utility demand chargers per month, depending on the utility. The range was from $16/mo to $1460/mo.

The way it works at San Diego Gas & Electric is this way (dollar amounts are estimates):

19.9kW - no demand fee surcharge
20kW - $26 per kW = $520 monthly
50kW - $26 per kW = $1300 monthly

The table in the above PDF lists $1061/month for San Diego Gas and Electric. It's unclear what power levels INL is talking about though...

If we assumed a 44 kW http://nissanqc.com/, then at $26 per kW, that'd be $1144/mo, which isn't far off from the INL figure.

 

[cwerdna]

To resurrect an old thread:

https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/up-of-michigan-to-receive-its-first-fast-dc-charger-but.202609/page-2 reported on
https://www.uppermichiganssource.com/2021/01/04/city-of-norway-gets-fastest-electric-vehical-charge-in-upper-michigan/ which mentions ""With a total cost of $77,300, the charger is available to the public beginning January 4, 2020." It's a dual plug and dual standard ChargePoint Express 250.

Also, the NissanQC domain has been taking over by a squatter that redirects to something else. One can see a snapshot of it at https://web.archive.org/web/20150703051934/http://nissanqc.com/.