San Diego adding 117 new 50-cents-per-kWh public chargers

so....for a PIP.....$1.50

 

Blink pedestal appears in my cursory examination to be 240V at 30A. 240 * 30 gives 7,200 W or 7.2 kW. For an hour, you will get 7.2kWh for your dollar. Compare that to 2 kWh for the others. If you quote for $1 per hour is for some other Blink, you will need to modify the math. It might also make a difference if you are paying for connect time, and you leave your car connected after it is fully charged.

 

that's pretty expensive compared to petrol, but i would pay it to support the infrastructure and drive electric!

 

How does the math work between the battery capacity and the actual kWh used for charging the battery.

What I have read is:
- Takes 1.5 hours for charging @ 240v (is it at 15A?)
- Even though battery pack is 4.4kWh, it never drains fully nor fully charged, so amount of refill (?) is less than 4.4 kWh


So, If @30A/240v it is 7.2kWh, you should be able to charge it in less than half an hour. Am I correct?

I feel that for EV to pick up, two things need to happen, one more charging stations and faster charging. 15mile/hour of charge is probably not going to really help the cause. Best charger Tesla offers is 56mile/hour. For home charging it is OK have longer charging hours, but commercial charging stations, it would be absolute necessary to think of fast charging. Otherwise the bandwidth will not be enough to make EV popular.

 

it takes a little over 3 kwh to recharge, but software does not allow for charging faster than 1.5 hours.

 

According to ChargePoint, 2.269KW is the charge rate I usually see, and totals out at about 3.1KWH. The in-car display says that 1.9KW is actually going into the battery. It's sort of depressing seeing the Leaf at the other station sucking up the power at around 3.3KW. This is at 240V.

 

I'd be more likely to charge at one of these places than at one of the commercials like Blink or ChargePoint. I'll pay for the electricity, but none of the proposed locations is at all a "convenience".

The stations are probably more necessary for the EV crowd. It's nice to have the 12-13 EV miles, and it adds some MPG, but I am not stressed out if I'm at 0.9miles of EV remaining. EV owners, on the other hand, would be very stressed out by seeing that if they weren't close to a recharging station.

They can do anything they want at City Hall, but they better not start charging me for trash pick-up! LOL

 

I believe the amount of kWh's deliverable to the PiP turns on the capability of the PiP's on-board charger (wiring size, relays etc) so you can't simply reprogram software and viola .... 25amp charger.
Unfortunately at the rate the pip charges you'd be throwing money down the drain if you used a blink or chargepoint charger at 2 dollars per hour. Gas is a LOT cheaper then that price, no matter where you buy it. These companies must think if you can afford a plug in - then you can afford high priced electricity no matter how outrageous they charge.

 

These are Blink units.. I got it straight from the source

 

Total failure.

They're marking up electricity 300-500%
A gas station marks up gas about five percent.

 

At $.50/kWh its a bit high but much better than many of the places that charge by the hour at 2-3$. If the install costs them 3K (parts + labor), and since blink will get some of the charging fees (probably half), the city will make say $1-$2/day and take 5-years to break even, so it seems fair.

 

I'm gonna take a wild guess here but it seems like someone's never paid for juice at Tier 4 in California before. To put it in simple terms California commercial ( non residential) rates are asinine. In huge part this is because our section of the grid is in horrible shape. Asinine rates help ensure that the grid is never over taxed. Let me give you a worst case scenario of California rates. If you ever wanted to set up a kiosk with a quick charger 400 volts 100 amps, before you ever even sold 1 kWh of juice you'd have to pay about 15,000 per month, just for the privilege of being hooked into the grid. Welcome to CA. Put another way it really doesn't matter that some joker may try to get 6 dollars per kilowatt hour. In CA, unless it's free, 50 cents per kilowatt hour, for non-residential rates, is as good as it gets.

 

Correct, I've never paid CA rates, though some of my family members have. The article is not about QC (or do you have more info suggesting it is?). The rate structures are to help manage usage and encourage certain behaviors in end customers. But Also I'd note that rates for municipalities are structured very differently (especially those that "run/manage" the utilities), and rates for large power users like big companies and unversities are not the same as residential rates.

Not sure if you were disagreeing with my analysis that .50/kWh was resonable or if you are now saying its really cheap or what?

 

Thanks for the answers, So, PiP cannot charge any faster than 1.5 hours. I guess thats how the system is built. PiP wins today (compared to pure EVs) because of the infrastructure and tech short coming when it comes to recharge. But, that may in turn be bad as people may just buy PiP but not really help the cause. Tech need to move up to higher range and faster charging, faster charging would also make the business of having charging stations more viable. At the best charging rate (50miles/hour), a business cannot sustain even if they charge $10 an hour.

It really makes me feel that the goal of EV tech has to be charging rate improvement. Just comparing it to gas, where you can get 300miles/5 minutes refill. If EV tech can shoot for 300miles/1 hour, it is going to have lot of adoption.

 

Looks like there are some efforts on faster charging. Here is an article on some research work aiming to charge Leaf in 10 minutes. A Ten-Minute Charger For The Nissan Leaf – In Time | TechCrunch

 

I'm pretty angry about this. It's ELECTRICITY. We already have an electricity infrastructure. Why should we pay 500% markup for it?

 

Why do you pay to park at a meter (way more than 500% markup -- its just space)? You would be paying, should you choose to do so, for the cost of them installing a charger where you can use it. At home you don't have to pay that markup.

The core infrastructure is likely there.. but you are paying, slowly, for the EVSE and install costs. My second company did surveillance systems including outdoor cameras. To dig up a parking area and install 1 pole and power can cost anywhere from 2-30K depending on how much digging and running of power is needed, and then there is the cost of the hardware (EVSE). Even at a low 3-4K total price, it will take the city 5 years to recover their install costs and if the install is complex and costs are 10K could be a decade. I see .50 a kWh as pre

 

You can use your own electricity at home and pay no markup for it. Adding chargers is adding new infrastructure. If a business is going to spend the money to install a charger, it needs to recover that cost.
Additional chargers will help EV adoption rates. But it is not required for everyone. It all depends upon your driving patterns and the vehicle you choose.

 

Saying we have infrastructure in SoCal is like saying we already have water . It's irrelevant if in fact we BARELY have enough infrastructure. Face it - surplus electricity went bye bye in the 1970's once central AC came in Vogue. Remember Gold medallion homes? Wells there are no more 100 percent electric homes in so Cal for a reason. Poor infrastructure. Why do you think So.Cal keeps having brown -outs during hot summer months

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