How one condo complex electrified all of its 143 parking spots… for free?!
How one condo complex electrified all of its 143 parking spots… for free?!
electrek.co
How one condo complex electrified all of its 143 parking spots... for free?!
5 comments
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Nice! Having power outlets at every parking spot would be useful for things other than EVs too.
This is in the county I live in (San Mateo County), near SFO airport. Peninsula Clean Energy has some good rebates for residential customers too, like $2500 off a heat pump water heater and $2500 off a heat pump HVAC. That's in addition to federal and state rebates.
Of course, the installers know this and charge more for San Mateo County customers than other nearby counties, but it still means you can get a heat pump water heater for minimal out-of-pocket cost.
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This is not free
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I don't quite get it, I'm in the UK and a standard 7kw charger can be configured to charge at any rate. So what you could do is when demand is low pump out 7kw and when demand is low drop back to say 1kw. The benefit is you can balance the demand by removing a vehicle sooner that would otherwise added to the load later, giving everyone more charge and further reducing load on the next day. It's literally what my electric company does across every charger linked to there network. Although they do it so they can schedule all the charging to happen at the cheapest hours, giving me a lower price for charging.
The same also applies to a 11/22kw charger, 3phase but most houses don't have 3phase supply and most cars top out at 11kw on ac.
It seems like what isn't really being said is that residents will pay the charger vendor a marked up fee for the electricity and the vendor will basically own their charging business for the lifetime of the charger.
Definitely a big downside, but the cost of rolling your own at an apartment complex and the need to get the HOA involved are prohibitive up front.
Also: without massive upgrades in charging infrastructure, especially in rental apartment complexes, you're going to see a ceiling reached in EV adoption, because a big chunk of the population simply cannot rely on their next rental also having a port even if their current does.