UC Irvine charging stations

[abasile]

$2.50/hour is far too expensive, as is the $2/hour that Caltech charges. While I agree with TonyWilliams that it would be better for EV drivers to pay those prices than to drive ICE cars, arguably the most important goal in installing public EVSEs should be to encourage EV adoption, just like the HOV privileges, tax credits, etc. An overly-expensive, rarely-used EVSE will not help the cause. Prospective EV drivers need to see these EVSEs getting used.

I think L2 charging should be $1/hour or less, at least at the LEAF's charging rate of 3.3 kW.

If recouping the cost of the EVSE is an issue, then universities should go with cheaper EVSEs. If I were in charge, I'd buy AeroVironment EVSEs at $600/each on eBay, and not bother with Coulomb or Ecotality. Make charging free, and post a sign encouraging online donations.

Also, I totally agree with Herm. If you want to help grow the charging network, install an outdoor EVSE or 240V outlet at your home and/or business, and post it on PlugShare.com. At my house, I'm offering the only publicly-accessible L2 EVSE (probably the only one, period) in the San Bernardino Mountains. Maybe some more of you can start sharing plugs so that when I'm down the mountain, I'll have more places to charge.

 

[hill]

I charged at the Mesa parking structure last December. My Chargepoint card worked to activate it. Since it was an event day, parking was $10. At that time there was no fee for charging. Is that still true?

There's a fee now.

The general public is charged $2.50/hour.

UCI affiliates get charged $2/hour. To qualify, you have to get your ChargePass serial number added to the "UCI pricing group".

Ok, I can not stand this any more. Has anyone heard of,
"ZevNet" ??

OH ! You didn't KNOW UCI had such a group? Or is it a club. A click? Apparently, a long time ago, UCI started sucking down research dollars (primarily for the hydrogen hoax) under this branding, ZevNet. Realistically, the only thing left of ZevNet (besides a few UCI folks that are leaching tax dollars ... still) are a bunch of old RAV4-ev's. Go by the Irvine train station some late Sunday. Many of the RAV4-EV's will be there. Do NOT even THINK of parking there though. You will be tossed out so fast, your head will spin. "ZevNet" parking only. I ran into a couple of the folks driving the RAV4-EV's. I asked them a very benign question, "how do you like the RAV4-EV ? In short, they knew NOTHING about the actual program that ostensibly the EV's are a part of ... yep ... all they knew was that "they let'm drive'm all around". And that's what they do. One that I caught up with was being used for a Costco grocery run (she said).

So, not only do UCI people (of no particular organization) get to drive the RAV4-EV's ... for completely non academic / non UCI purposes / non - research use ... they get free parking ... EXCLUSIVE parking, and yet YOU have to pay TOP dollar ... OVER priced dollars, to use a UCI located "J" plug. :lol:

Maybe ZevNet had some inkling of validity many years ago, but the vestiges of what ever is left of it, is a mockery - when it comes to being any real part of EV advocacy. It's a nut I've been trying to crack for a while now. When I try to find out why the ZevNet's non-existent shadow organization gets to exclusively use cal-trans metro-link property exclusively (you can't even PAY to charge there), Metro-link suggests I talk to "these" folks ... and then OCTD suggests that I talk to "these" folks ... and on and on they send me ... fore ever chasing my tail. ZevNet even has a couple exclusive stalls at Irvine Metro-link, exclusively marked off for old old Manzinita charger plugs ... a format that EVnut tells me has been out of use for over 15 years! I had to take a phone pick it was so unbelievable. Our tax dollars hard at work.
:lol:

It reminds me of some of these little cities with a bloated, overpaid mayor ... or a counsel member who continues to abuse the system, because no one's minding the store. Sorry for sounding jaded ... but I'm still P-O'd about the fertility scandal of UCI ... and the powers at UCI simply never thought it might be a good time to look at their other departments that abuse the system.

Good luck trying to sign your business up with ZevNet. We did. We got no where. You want to try and get your company on their roster? That would require their web site to be functioning. It's not. Here's the "join" page, for example:
http://www.zevnet.org/uci/apply/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
But they do have lots of other pretty web pages ... lots of info (though none newer than a half decade). Hey UCI ... thanks for the L2 charging ... so what if I'd have to pay $15 to fill up. Maybe they don't realize I could get AAA to flatbed our Leaf home for less $$. Yea ... those L2 chargers will get as much use as some of there dinosaur unused chargers at the train station. Ok, I've exhausted all my ranting frustration ... off the soap box.

 

[smkettner]

zevnet sounds like the standard California budget and expense SNAFU.

 

[coolfilmaker]

So what it boils down to is that the woman in charge of the project hates cars in general so she isn't going to support any type of car in any way.

She is also the person who set up the failed Zotwheels program.
Both programs are overpriced and almost devoid of use.

 

[JeremyW]

I got my EE degree at UCI. I'd like to shed some light on the "mentality" of the school. First off, everything is expensive there, to the point of blatantly obvious. The cost to charge is no exception.

I believe the charge points will be used by those who need it, and I'd say the 4 hour time limit affects more of the leaf drivers then the price. UCI parking enforcement is a profit maker for the school, and I have no doubt ICEing won't be much of a problem. I do suggest someone put a sign that warns to disable the charge timer on the leaf.

On the brighter side of things, during the day some of your charge does come from solar.

These are on top of MSTB, but there's others all over campus. We also have a giant thermos that we freeze water in at night for AC use during the day.

EDIT: Picture needed some resizing...

 

[garygid]

What time do the ZEVNET people show up at the train station?
(Or, did I not understand correctly?)

 

[smkettner]

Jeremy, so what is the UCI electric bill each month?

 

[jkyu99]

Richard,
10 cents per hour x 24 hours x 30 days is only $72 per month for this experiment that cost a $5000 taxpayer grant to install.

Recommend an experiment.
First charger in line is free (Bold sign above each charger).
Second charger in line is 25 cents per hour plugged in.
Third charger in line 50 cents per hour and so on until the 8th charger in line is $1.75 per hour.

Parking is free, no UCI permit needed.
$2000 fine for parking a non-EV in the spot. Clearly marked.
Place a webcam direct to the UC campus cops and allow all ticket funds to fund the campus cops end of the year party.

Collect usage data for a year. Hours Plugged in chargng & hours plugged in no charging. ICE fees collected.
Plot usage of each EV parking spot across time with electricity costs while charging. Add in maintenance/repair and installation costs into second set of graphs.
Publish paper for senior thesis.

 

[thankyouOB]

do blink and others charge for charging time? or time plugged in?

 

[walterbays]

do blink and others charge for charging time? or time plugged in?

Blink FAQ sounds like time plugged in. https://www.blinknetwork.com/membership-faqs.html

Not only do these fees ensure publicly available chargers are properly maintained, but they also provide incentives for users to move out of a parking space when they are done charging their EV. For businesses, the access fees offer the opportunity to recoup ongoing operational costs and ensure that consumers and EV drivers that need it most use the space.

 

[GRA]

Somewhat off-topic, but why in hell aren't chargers billing by the kWh instead of a fixed hourly rate? It's not as if they don't know how much juice they're supplying. The fixed rate penalizes slower chargers like the Leaf (although I expect that all BEVs will have 6.6kW chargers shortly), and will more or less force people to disconnect once they get to 80% and the charging rate slows down. That will lose the company charging fees unless they have people waiting to use it.

 

[Valdemar]

Somewhat off-topic, but why in hell aren't chargers billing by the kWh instead of a fixed hourly rate? It's not as if they don't know how much juice they're supplying. The fixed rate penalizes slower chargers like the Leaf (although I expect that all BEVs will have 6.6kW chargers shortly), and will more or less force people to disconnect once they get to 80% and the charging rate slows down. That will lose the company charging fees unless they have people waiting to use it.

It has been brought up multiple times but so far it is time-based everywhere afaik. There may be some issues with energy resell per kWh, as only utility companies are allowed to do so.

 

[coolfilmaker]

UCI has a 19 megawatt cogeneration plant. I think it's likely the the amount of power that they pay Edison for is below 50%.

Ronald Fleming did an interview where he stated that his job was to eliminate his job by eliminating car commuters and eliminating the need for parking. This is why they don't want anyone to use the chargers.

 

[JeremyW]

Ronald Fleming did an interview where he stated that his job was to eliminate his job by eliminating car commuters and eliminating the need for parking. This is why they don't want anyone to use the chargers.

Is this a joke? Its mostly a commuter school.

 

[coolfilmaker]

Ronald Fleming did an interview where he stated that his job was to eliminate his job by eliminating car commuters and eliminating the need for parking. This is why they don't want anyone to use the chargers.

Is this a joke? Its mostly a commuter school.

Nope. Here's a link to the audio.

 

[JeremyW]

Nope.

I meant your comment. You seriously think, after going through the trouble to install them, that they want NOBODY to use them. Are you serious? Sure its expensive, but in the grand scheme of BEING A STUDENT, its not. The "for profit" bookstore on campus regularly charges $50-$150 markup on most school books. Do you think they do that because they want nobody to buy them? I suppose you could take the cynical stance that they are taking advantage of ignorance and opportunity: you can get cheaper books online or you can charge at home. But to say that they would do so because they don't want to sell books or that they don't want people to charge their EV's...that's just silly.

I'm not sure if you've been to the school, but there is a LOT of parking. There's 4 major parking structures and a probably about a dozen regular lots scattered around. Ronald Fleming mentions that recently opened student housing makes him "lose" income since these students don't have to bring their cars. Although he fails to mention that you can bring your car if you like, they just charge $80/month instead of $60, and you can only park in the lot near your dorm/apartment/house. I would put his comment about "eliminating his own job" as wishful thinking, nothing more. He even mentioned that he hoped nobody would take it the wrong way. Don't forget, this is Southern California, we do love our cars.

I have no idea how much UCI pays in electricity, or their price per kWh. I honestly didn't know we had a co-gen plant! I did take the picture of those solar panels though.

 

[Luft]

Somewhat off-topic, but why in hell aren't chargers billing by the kWh instead of a fixed hourly rate? It's not as if they don't know how much juice they're supplying. The fixed rate penalizes slower chargers like the Leaf (although I expect that all BEVs will have 6.6kW chargers shortly), and will more or less force people to disconnect once they get to 80% and the charging rate slows down. That will lose the company charging fees unless they have people waiting to use it.

It has been brought up multiple times but so far it is time-based everywhere afaik. There may be some issues with energy resell per kWh, as only utility companies are allowed to do so.

That's exactly right. We need an exception in the law to allow the resale of electricity for the purpose of charging electric vehicles.

 

[Valdemar]

That's exactly right. We need an exception in the law to allow the resale of electricity for the purpose of charging electric vehicles.

Even if it existed I don't think charging station owners would be very eager to adopt the consumption-based model as the cost of electricity itself is just a small portion of the total price they set (as in this UCI example).

 

[coolfilmaker]

Nope.

I meant your comment. You seriously think, after going through the trouble to install them, that they want NOBODY to use them. Are you serious? Sure its expensive, but in the grand scheme of BEING A STUDENT, its not. The "for profit" bookstore on campus regularly charges $50-$150 markup on most school books. Do you think they do that because they want nobody to buy them? I suppose you could take the cynical stance that they are taking advantage of ignorance and opportunity: you can get cheaper books online or you can charge at home. But to say that they would do so because they don't want to sell books or that they don't want people to charge their EV's...that's just silly.

I'm not sure if you've been to the school, but there is a LOT of parking. There's 4 major parking structures and a probably about a dozen regular lots scattered around. Ronald Fleming mentions that recently opened student housing makes him "lose" income since these students don't have to bring their cars. Although he fails to mention that you can bring your car if you like, they just charge $80/month instead of $60, and you can only park in the lot near your dorm/apartment/house. I would put his comment about "eliminating his own job" as wishful thinking, nothing more. He even mentioned that he hoped nobody would take it the wrong way. Don't forget, this is Southern California, we do love our cars.

I have no idea how much UCI pays in electricity, or their price per kWh. I honestly didn't know we had a co-gen plant! I did take the picture of those solar panels though.

They have said that they don't want to encourage or discourage anyone from using electric cars and that they hope people will charge at home "because it is the most economical". I don't think anyone at the bookstore would encourage people to buy their books anywhere else. Books bought in the bookstore also have the added value of being guaranteed to be the correct book. Electricity is electricity. They have also said that they installed the EVSEs to reduce range anxiety, a function which they could do with little to no use.

They pay probably over $100 to subsidize each yearly OCTA pass and Ron came up with his ZotWheels program which he clearly wants to succeed. You may say that it's ridiculous that after having spent a few thousand dollars installing chargers he wouldn't want income from them but what you have to realize is #1 it's not his money and #2 in the grand scheme of things he could give a rats ass about an extra few thousand dollars a year in his budget.

The reason I want free chargers is to encourage electric car use. The reason I am pissed is that Ron sets up hugely expensive things like ZotWheels, falsely claims that they reduce huge amounts of emissions and then complains about parking & transportation not having any money.

 

[Luft]

That's exactly right. We need an exception in the law to allow the resale of electricity for the purpose of charging electric vehicles.

Even if it existed I don't think charging station owners would be very eager to adopt the consumption-based model as the cost of electricity itself is just a small portion of the total price they set (as in this UCI example).

I don't think Blink or ChargePoint will be eager to adopt any business model that would reduce their profits but trying to rape EV drivers with outrageous fuel costs will not only ensure that they fail but will slow the adoption of EVs. How many people are going to want to buy a car with limited range if the fuel costs are more than that of a ICE vehicle?

I think that both these companies are making a mistake in trying to network Level 2 charging stations so that they can collect fees for monitoring, billing and the collection of money. Level 2 charging stations are just too slow to be good range extenders. Almost everyone will simply charge at home and avoid the high cost of using these chargers.

DC QC stations will actually give us something useful that we can't get at home. But if the Level 2 charging rates are any indication of the greed these companies have, they'll shoot themselves in the foot while trying to extract money for the use of their DC QC stations as well. :roll:

The one business model that I see that could actually give EV driver's real value and make these companies a lot of money would require that they work together and come up with a flat subscription rate like some of the Japanese oil companies are doing. http://carscoop.blogspot.com/2011/12/japanese-gas-stations-begin-to-offer-ev.html

I think this would work well with DC QC stations but not so well with Level 2 stations. It would also promote the adoption of EVs. People will see super low fuel costs as a way out of the grip of the petroleum cartels. As more and more people subscribe the better it will get for the EV fuel providers because most people will pay the subscription and not use the DC QC stations often. It will be nice to know that they won't get stranded but actually using the stations will still not be as convenient as just plugging in at home.

I really wish that Nissan would encourage their dealers to install DC QC stations and offer a subscription service. It would pretty much ensure that their EVs would start selling like hotcakes.