I got this email at work......tell me what you think

I shouldn’t have to demand, I should just take them, seeing as you don’t own any of it.

 

Ok then, there is a policy there, fair enough. Employees are not allowed to use electrical outlets.

Btw, that free cup of coffee costs more than the PiP costs to charge, and that's not counting the time spent standing around drinking the coffee.

 

Now I know why you're unemployed!

 

"I shouldn’t have to demand, I should just take them, seeing as you don’t own any of it"

Wow, I squinted really hard and didn’t see the smiley face. I’m going to assume you: a. misspoke, b. would apologize, or c. test that idea in preparation for a pine box. Note smiley face -> . That would be humor.

I’m not one to (typically) cast aspersions, but it’s entirely possible that when you were renting the apartment you mentioned I was already in ownership of a few. I may have a nuanced idea of ownership, but really...

 

Yes, I am one of those trust fund kids people always complain about. I saved up paychecks and employee stock and created my own trust fund. I never was a very good employee, a bit better employer though.

 

The free EV charging at my old employer in the 1990s was at a business covered by a similar requirement. Dedicated circuits were added for this specific purpose. EVs were not to plug into other outlets. When the one EV driver needed an outlet before that installation, facilities identified one specific outlet for his temporary use.

Space heaters and EVs are large enough loads to demand dedicated circuits. They cannot be plugged in whilly-nilly to any open socket without blowing circuit breakers, as discovered by the bit-heads who moved in next to my group and plugged their server farm into our outlets along the shared spine of the cubicle farm. With a lot of heavy equipment, my group had carefully planned our loads and requested extra circuits when we moved into that facility. The neighboring bitheads who moved in the next year had no concept of limited circuit capacity, and shut us all down. After we unplugged them, managers had to negotiate a temporary power sharing arrangement, and we had to show them how to balance their loads among the available circuits, until facilities could add sufficient capacity.

EVs are sufficiently large loads that the facilities department may need to know about them for circuit and load planning.

Space heaters in the office consume energy not only in their own heat, but also in the overall building's cooling system. With a 1 MW average load, 1.6 MW peak, this building's HVAC system was in cooling mode full time, even when snow was on the ground.

 

OK let’s do some math on plugging in your car at work. This is a rural area so most folks would need a Chevy Volt or similar to be able to get to work on electric alone. Let’s then suppose that each person can charge at home to get to work, and then charge at work to drive home. I will use your number of $1.30 per charge for the Volt. Let’s say that of the total employees of a company that employs 5,000 people, 1,000 will drive the Volt and charge it at work. If we take a standard work year of 240 days times the 1,000 employees, this gives us 240,000 charge cycles per anum. Then multiply that by $1.30 and get $312,000 per year, just for the electric alone. This doesn’t take into account the construction of the entire electrical infrastructure, permits, safety requirements, and maintenance of the system. When you say it’s just one PiP or one guy and his Volt, where does it end?

 

If I had a 1000 employees out of 5000 that drive an EV to work I would be thrilled to pay the $312K per year. That's like 0.3% of their salary to make them happy and not burn half a million gallons of gasoline to/from the parking lot. YESSSSSS!!!!!!!!

I would probably just take the $312k out of the bonuses for the gasoline drivers they were probably late back from lunch anyway getting an oil change. Ok, maybe I wouldn't take it out of their bonuses. How much does that facility manager get paid?

 

That $312,000 is just the power. You are talking millions in construction costs. I suggest if you want to charge your car at work, you pay for the construction of the system to do it, and the power. We could put a credit card reader on each outlet, so you can pay for it. Do you care enough about the gas used to put your money where your mouth is and pay the freight? Why is it the company’s responsibility? Isn’t that your responsibility? Rowing a boat makes me happy, should my employer build a canal from my house to work so I can row to work? If you can’t see the expense of all this, then I must assume you’ve never paid for anything in your life, and thus why you are unemployed, and why I am stuck paying for you.

 

Rest assured you are not paying for me to remain unemployed. And you are correct, I have NEVER paid for anything in my life. It has ALL been given to me. Just ask my mother.

As an employee, why would I pay for the construction of the system. I didn't pay to have the workspace constructed, the employer did (or his landlord). I would probably just go across the street and work for the employer that did install the infrastructure. Did you pay to construct the gasoline station?

Keep in mind this thread started with the OPs use of an existing plug, not one that had to be installed or even upgraded.

 

Reedja, you seem to be venturing into straw man territory here. I disagree with many of the comments above about employees being "entitled" to plug in their cars at work, but using a hypothetical problem of 1000 employees (20% of the work force) wanting to charge their Volts as a reason why an employer shouldn't make an effort to accommodate a single request from a PiP owner isn't particularly relevant. By the time 20% of the population is driving plugin vehicles, policies and practices will evolve. 13 years into the deployment of hybrid vehicles ~2.4 Million have been sold in the US. Certainly less than that are still on the road, representing less than 1% of the US fleet of 250+ million registered vehicles. We are decades from plugin vehicles making up 20% of the national fleet.

In the mean time, many employers already use small financial incentives to encourage employees to seek greener transportation options. Some of these are done for reasons of good corporate citizenship, employee morale/satisfaction, or PR value, but for most its to comply with local air quality regulations. So its not at all unreasonable that an employer might also spend a certain amount of money helping employees driving plugin vehicles.

Rob

 

This is an interesting outcome of this discussion, the implication is IRS would or might say those getting "free" electrons at work need to be paying IRS taxes on said free electrons as imputed income.

 

Keep in mind that the employer may have other devices on that same circuit, full time or temporary, so that plugging in a car could exceed its NEC capacity. So OP needs to ask first.

Not asking, and not knowing which circuits had how much available capacity, is how my new work neighbors popped several circuit breakers, shutting down some of our equipment and wrecking some tests.

 

That's a good question. I believe carpooling benefits are tax exempt, would be interesting to know if charging benefits are covered anywhere.

Rob

 

If I remember correctly, it was a couple decades ago, one of the considerations was that the diesel fuel could be transfered out of the employee's vehicle and sold for additional income.

 

Since the facilities manager did not mention that in his letter I think we can assume that was not the case. There was no pretense that using the plug was not safe or that it was preventing another piece of equipment from being plugged in. We have to take the letter "as is", simply restricting employees from using electricity at the workplace, or at least this one employee.

 

I have no problem at all with my employer encouraging "green" transportation by providing exterior outlets for those who choose to roll an EV, nor do I think that the Union or the IRS should or even would step in a fuss about this benefit.
That's really not the point.
To me, one of the two things that stick out in this discussion are whether it's prudent to stick something like a 12-amp load onto an exterior circuit without letting the owner or facility manager know about it. After all...what if there are two EV drivers on the lot? Or three???
Is it 'first come?" or as a business owner do I need to provide a GFI circuit for every EV owner? What if Employee "A" were scheduled to report to work an hour before Employee "B" and both have EVs, but there's only one exterior outlet?
I've seen a case where one of our technicians popped an exterior GFI breaker doing some daffy thing or other, and it resulted in a cable vault being partially flooded, since the moron didn't let anybody know that he had lifted the breaker!
This is an extreme example, but EV's aren't an insignificant load. We're not talking about charging your i-thingy, or running a radio here, and like I said before, I'm completely cool with the company offering free juice to EV owners. It's like their tax benefits.
No. I can't participate myself, but I do not begrudge this benefit to others if for no other reason, than it will shut them the heck up 25 years from now when EV's are still a niche vehicle in a mostly ICE market.
After all...they're still screeching about the EV-1 and how 'unfair' the world is to EVs.

The other issue is a moral one, and it's like music.
You either appreciate it or you don't.
If you think that filching $0.30 worth of electricity off of the city...or your neighbor...or your boss is cool because "your cause is just" then I really can't speak to that point, since it involves something that I either don't need to explain to you, or I couldn't possibly explain it to you.

I'm thinking though...that if the shoe were on the other foot…..that if you caught somebody siphoning one cup of gasoline out of your car every day it wouldn't really matter that much---would it?
I mean....I checked.
At current prices, we're only talking about $0.30 worth of gas.
That doesn’t really matter very much now does it?

 

I can almost guarantee that as soon as one senior manager gets an EV, there will be plugs available and probably free.

 

^ That's because where I work...(and I make union wages!) only a senior manager can afford an EV.

 

Really? I pay $12/day for mine. How much do they cost in union land ?

Oh, wait a minute. I don't pay for anything. They give it to me for $12/day.