Workplace Charging Challenge: Types of Charging Stations at the Workplace (Text Version)

This is a text version of the video for Workplace Charging Challenge: Types of Charging Stations at the Workplace presented on Oct. 4, 2016.

Slide 1

NAY CHEHAB: Hello everyone and welcome to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Types of Charging Stations at the Workplace webinar. My name is Nay Chehab and I support the Challenge’s stakeholder engagement and outreach efforts. Today’s webinar will provide an introduction to the DOE Workplace Charging Challenge and will highlight our work with organizations across the country.

Many plug-in electric vehicle drivers charge their vehicles primarily at home, but accessing chargers at work can help owners double their vehicles' all-electric daily commuting range. To increase the convenience and affordability of driving electric, employers can take into account the available budget, program goals, employee interest, and site specific requirements, to choose to install Level 1, Level 2, and/or DC fast charging.

Today, Margaret Smith will be talking about the three different types of charging that could be implemented at workplaces. We will also be hearing from three of our partners – General Motors, Coca-Cola, and the Port of Portland – about the types of workplace charging that suit their needs and that of their employees.

By the end of the webinar, you will have a solid understanding of how to estimate what the best type of charging is for your workplace, and how we at the Workplace Charging Challenge can help.

Before starting, a couple of housekeeping items before we start: A recording of this webinar along with the presentation slides will be available on our website, and we’ll send a link out to all webinar registrants as soon as that is posted.

We also ask you to type in your questions in the chat box on the right side of your screen. We will be answering them at the end of the webinar.

Slide 2

NAY CHEHAB: Some folks here may be learning about the Challenge for the first time.

DOE’s nationwide initiative works to raise the profile of workplace charging and increase the number of employers offering PEV charging to 500 by 2018. We’re really excited to share that we’re more than three quarters of the way there with over 380 partners! These partners account for over 600 unique worksites where more than 5,500 charging stations are accessible to over 9,000 PEV drivers.

The first reason why we’ve been successful with this program is that we’ve built it off of a voluntary partnership model that has worked well for DOE in other areas.

Slide 3

NAY CHEHAB: For our part, DOE provides employers with technical assistance, recognizes their success, and has established a network for best practices sharing.

Employers who are willing to publicly commit to providing employee charging can join the Challenge as a partner. They voluntarily communicate their charging plans and share their progress by responding to an annual survey.

Slide 4

NAY CHEHAB: Through the Challenge, DOE works to provide recognition to leading U.S. employers offering workplace charging.

Over the past year, we continued our social media efforts. DOE’s Twitter account has over 340,000 Followers, and DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Facebook page has over 150,000 Likes. We tap into these two channels regularly to highlight partners’ exceptional workplace charging efforts.

In our Annual Report, we recognize employers for their full participation in the Challenge. These are the organizations that complete the 3 voluntary actions: submitting a profile, submitting a plan, and responding to the annual survey. They also receive DOE-signed certificates honoring their efforts.

This year, we also recognized partners on our website by adding “badges” on the right hand side of their profiles. Here you can see what the Committed Partner and Challenge Leader icons look like.

In addition, we mentioned many partners in case studies, focusing on higher education workplace charging, Level 1 charging at the workplace, and workplace charging at leased facilities – all of which are available on our website.

We also include partner highlights and events in our quarterly newsletter.

If you would like to discuss potential recognition opportunities, please reach out to your Account Manager!

Slide 5

NAY CHEHAB: When it comes to by technical assistance, DOE and its Workplace Charging ambassadors deliver specialized workplace charging content and tools on assessing employee demand and determining which type of charging is right for a workplace. On our website you’ll find a variety of resources on installing, managing, and promoting charging.

A workplace charging program doesn’t end when the stations are placed in the ground – we have a lot of great content on how employers can engage employees on the benefits of driving electric.

We deliver this content through a number of channels: web and print materials like the handbook pictured here, but we also conduct quarterly webinars – like the one you’re on right now – and distribute newsletters so folks can stay up to date on new informational and financial incentives for workplace charging.

Slide 6

NAY CHEHAB: Our resources are available on our website and some of them are highlighted on this slide. They vary in content. Some of them will inform you on vehicle and charging station basics, while others will help you decide if workplace charging is right for your workplace. With some of the available documents, you will learn how to install and eventually manage your charging stations.

Slide 7

NAY CHEHAB: Before Margaret takes it away, and in case you missed it in our webinar invite, our new resource on Level 1 charging at the workplace highlights the benefits of L1 and shows that practically any employer can offer charging at a low cost. This can be found on the Workplace Charging Challenge website on our main page on the rotator and under the “Install Workplace Charging” tab.

I will now hand things over to Margaret.

MARGARET SMITH: Thank you, Nay.

Slide 8

MARGARET SMITH: Electric vehicle charging stations are parking spots where a vehicle can connect to an electricity source and charge its battery.

Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment – or EVSE – consists of all the equipment needed to deliver electrical energy from an electricity source to a plug-in electric vehicle battery. The vehicle charging time depends on the state of charge of the battery, the power coming from the EVSE, and the rate a vehicle can accept power, which may be lower than the supply power.

There are three primary types of EVSE: Two types – AC Level 1 and AC Level 2 – provide alternating current to the vehicle, which the vehicle’s onboard charging equipment converts to the direct current needed to charge the battery.

AC Level 1 charging stations connect to a 120-volt AC power supply and provide about 5 miles of range for every hour of charging. Most electric vehicles come with a Level 1 charging cordset like the one shown in the top left which plugs into an AC Level 1 outlet on one end and plugs into the vehicle on the other end.

AC Level 2 charging stations connect to a 208 or 240-volt AC power supply and typically provide about 10-20 miles of range for every hour of charging.

A low power Level 2 charging station is well suited for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles since many plug-in hybrids can only charge at a maximum rate of 3.3-kilowatt and they have a relatively small battery pack. Many all-electric vehicles can charge at 6.6-kilowatt or higher. So these vehicles can utilize a higher-power Level 2 charging station.

The third type – DC Fast Charging – provides direct current electricity directly to the vehicle’s battery.

DC Fast Charging is the highest power option for charging a vehicle. The majority of DC fast chargers on the market supply 50-kilowatts of power which adds about 50 miles of range in 20 minutes. Lower and higher power DC fast chargers are also available.

The picture on the bottom left of this slide shows side-by-side Level 2 EVSE and a DC fast charger.

Slide 9

MARGARET SMITH: Let’s start with discussing Level 1 charging at the workplace. An employer can offer Level 1 charging in two different scenarios. The first scenario is providing a Level 1 outlet next to a parking spot and allowing employees to plug in their own personal cordset for EV charging.

The second scenario is providing a Level 1 charging station including the EVSE. In this scenario, the employee does not need to bring and use a personal charging cordset. The charging equipment is installed at the workplace either by mounting it to a wall or installing it in the ground as a pedestal.

Level 1 EVSE tends to be very basic. It can safely charge a vehicle, but it doesn’t include many advanced features that are available with some Level 2 or DC fast chargers.

It is more convenient for employees if a workplace installs Level 1 EVSE rather than asking an employee to use a personal cordset. Employees might prefer to leave their cordset at home and consider it to be a hassle to bring the cordset to work. They may also have concerns about vandalism or cordset theft. But, despite those concerns, offering a Level 1 outlet for charging can be a very successful workplace charging strategy.

There are a few things that are important to keep in mind when offering a Level 1 outlet for charging: The outlets should be National Electrical Manufacturers Association – or NEMA – commercial grade outlets that meet National Electric Code requirements. Outlets should be on a dedicated circuit, preferably rated for 20 amps. And if the outlet is outside and could get wet, use a ground fault circuit interrupter outlet with an outlet cover.

It is a good practice to have an electrician inspect the outlet annually for any signs that it may be getting worn out. It is also a good practice to place the outlet close to the ground as shown in the picture on the left so that the weight of the cordset does not put strain on the outlet.

Slide 10

MARGARET SMITH: Level 1 EVSE costs from $300 to $1,800. The lowest end of that cost range is a basic cordset. You can purchase a cordset or a wall-mounted Level 1 unit for about $300 to $600. On the higher end of that cost range is a pedestal-mounted unit with access control and cable management for $1,500 to $1,800.

Offering an electrical outlet is usually the lowest-cost scenario for workplace charging because you don’t have to purchase the EVSE.

If you already have a commercial grade NEMA outlet on a dedicated circuit by a parking spot, there could be no installation cost for offering a Level 1 outlet. However, it is important to ask an electrician to inspect an outlet and ensure it is in good condition before using it for Level 1 charging. There may be a fee for that inspection.

There is not much data available regarding installation costs for Level 1 charging. From various interviews, I use a rule of thumb that it costs about $300 to $1,000 to install an outlet and dedicated circuit in a parking lot or garage. If you are installing a wall-mounted Level 1 EVSE, the installation cost is the same range - $300 to $1,000.

These costs assume you have sufficient electrical capacity at your site so you are not paying for electrical upgrades.

If you are installing a pedestal-mounted EVSE, the installation cost will be higher because of the cost of placing the pedestal and trenching. Based on past Level 1 installations and assuming no extravagant electrical work or trenching is needed, a pedestal-mounted EVSE installation could cost $1,000 to $3,000.

With any type of EVSE installation, there is the potential for a significant increase in cost due to electrical work, trenching, or other special site needs. To get an estimate for how much it would cost to install EVSE at a specific site, you need to contact an electrician or EVSE manufacturer for a site assessment.

Slide 11

MARGARET SMITH: Some employers may want to subsidize or fully recover the cost of providing workplace charging by requiring employees to pay a fee. Now the total cost to an employer will vary based on the equipment purchased, installation cost, electricity price, and how much electricity drivers consume.

Here are a couple examples of calculating a driver fee to cover all the costs of Level 1 charging over a 10-year period.

In these scenarios, if the employer provides a Level 1 outlet, the employee may pay $12 to $18 a month. If the employer provides a wall-mounted Level 1 EVSE, the employee may pay $14 to $23 a month.

Slide 12

MARGARET SMITH: Next, let’s talk about Level 2 EVSE.

It is very common for employers to choose Level 2 charging stations for their workplace charging program. Since 3 to 4 hours of using a Level 2 charging station is plenty of time to replenish the car’s battery for most commutes, some workplaces provide a structure for sharing Level 2 charging stations. Employees may move their cars or the charging cord mid-day so that two or more employees are able to use the same charging station.

In the bottom left picture from Alliant Energy, you can see the EVSE is installed between two parking spots so the cord can reach two different vehicles without moving the vehicles. In the image on the top left from the EV Project, the charging cord for those EVSE can reach four vehicles.

The Workplace Charging Challenge website has suggestions on how to manage station sharing.

Can we move to the next slide, please? Thank you.

Slide 13

MARGARET SMITH: There are many options for choosing a Level 2 EVSE. One of the fundamental choices is whether you want a networked or non-networked EVSE.

Charging station networks can monitor station availability, allow for energy monitoring, and analyze station usage. They can also process payments, complete automated diagnostics, limit access to certain people, and offer customer support.

Through a networked EVSE, an employer can set a customized pricing policy. For example, employees can consume electricity for free, while visitors pay a fee.

If a charging station is networked, the employer will pay a network fee that varies from $100 to $900 annually per charging station.

An employer may want the benefits of an EVSE with advanced features or prefer a more basic EVSE. Non-networked Level 2 charging stations are priced lower than networked charging stations and do not have ongoing fees which can significantly lower their operating cost.

Some non-networked charging stations have simple access control systems. If you want to restrict access to a Level 1 outlet used for charging, you can put a pad lock on the outlet cover so only people with a key can use it.

Slide 14

MARGARET SMITH: Single port Level 2 charging stations are available for between $400 and $6,500, depending on the equipment features. A basic wall-mounted unit will be on the lowest end of the cost range, about $500 to $1,000. Choosing a pedestal design will increase the cost; adding some basic data collection will increase the cost more. Choosing a pedestal unit with many advanced features will put the unit in the higher end of the cost range - $3,000 to $6,000.

Installation costs vary significantly for Level 2 charging stations. In the EV Project, installation costs ranged from $600 to over $12,000 with an average workplace charging installation costing $2,223.

A simple installation will be on the lower end of the cost range, while a more complex installation will move toward the middle or higher end. An installation becomes more complex when it involves trenching, electrical work, or meeting Americans with Disability Act requirements.

Slide 15

MARGARET SMITH: DC Fast Charging is the least common option for workplace charging. Currently, less than 2 percent of charging stations installed or planned by the Workplace Charging Challenge partners are DC fast chargers.

Providing a fast charger can allow many vehicles to charge in one day. Knowing that fast charging is an option is reassuring to drivers who are not guaranteed access to a Level 1 or Level 2 charging station. Perhaps there are more electric vehicles than Level 1 and Level 2 charging stations, and whoever arrives first, gets access to those charging stations. Or maybe a driver usually charges from 1:00 to 5:00 in the afternoon but has to leave work early unexpectedly. Knowing that using a DC fast charger is an option can give peace of mind for employees that rely on workplace charging to reach their next destination.

In order for a vehicle to use a DC fast charger, it has to be compatible with the connector. The two connectors shown in the bottom right picture are SAE J1772 Combined Charging System and the CHAdeMO connector. Some vehicles are only compatible with the SAE connector and others are only compatible with the CHAdeMO connector. There are DC fast chargers like the one pictured in the top right which offer both connector types.

The cost to purchase and install a fast charger is much higher than Level 1 and 2 charging. Fast chargers range in cost from $10,000 to $40,000, depending on the power level and additional features.

Installation costs can range from $4,000 to $51,000, and the permitting costs for a fast charger may also be higher. In some areas, a fast charger can incur high demand charges from the utility.

It is important to discuss plans to install any type of charging station with your utility in advance so that you understand how the charging station will affect both your consumption and demand fees. It is especially important to work with your utility in advance if you are considering DC Fast Charging.

Next slide, please.

Slide 16

MARGARET SMITH: Looking at Level 1, Level 2, and DC Fast Charging side by side, you can see the different tiers of charging speeds.

You can anticipate one vehicle using a Level 1 EVSE each day. If you implement a car sharing system, two or more vehicles could use a Level 2 EVSE each day. A DC fast charger has the potential to charge many vehicles in one day as long as people are actively moving their vehicles. If people reserve 30-minute time slots throughout the day, you can charge 18 vehicles during a 9-hour workday.

When it comes to additional features such as access control, energy monitoring, and payment systems, you can buy Level 2 EVSE and DC Fast Chargers that have those functions. For Level 1 charging, there are some products that come with access control. I am not aware of Level 1 units that include energy monitoring or payment systems, but there are secondary systems that can be installed to perform those functions.

Next slide, please.

Slide 17

Margaret Smith

Now that we have gone over the types of charging stations, how do you choose the right design for a particular workplace?

First, it’s helpful to survey your employees to find out how many people would want workplace charging for what type of vehicle, and what’s their commute distance? From that information, you can identify if Level 1 or Level 2 charging would meet their needs.

Second, the employer needs to think through their workplace charging policy to understand what features you do or do not need at a charging station. Do you want your employees to pay a fee for charging or offer it as a free benefit? If you do want them to pay, what payment system would you put in place? A monthly fee or pay-based on the amount of electricity consumed? Do you need to limit who has access to use the charging station? Do you want to track energy consumption? Do you want employees to move their cars mid-day? The answers to those questions can help you determine if you want Level 1 or Level 2 charging stations, networked or non-networked.

Third, look at your parking lot. Ask an electrician to determine how much electrical load is available for charging stations before your utility would need to upgrade the electrical service. Maybe with the available power you have the choice to install ten Level 1 charging stations or two Level 2 charging stations, and anything beyond that would require costly electrical upgrades.

Finally, your budget will play a big role in the decision-making process.

Now we will hear from three Workplace Charging Challenge partners about why they chose their particular charging station design.

Slide 18

MARGARET SMITH: First, we will hear from Britta Gross about General Motors’ workplace charging program. Ms. Gross is the Director of Advanced Vehicle Commercialization Policy. She is responsible for identifying energy strategy, partnership, and policy required to enable the commercialization of GM’s alternative fuel technology program. Since 2002, Ms. Gross has been leading energy infrastructure and commercialization efforts to GM’s advanced vehicle program.

BRITTA GROSS: Hi there, are you ready for me? This is Britta.

MARGARET SMITH:

Yes, we’re ready for you, Britta.

BRITTA GROSS: Thank you for the introduction.

Slide 19

BRITTA GROSS: Hi everybody. If you could just, yep, thank you very much. So let me just give you an overview of where we are today at GM regarding workplace charging and, actually, how we got there because – That was a fantastic presentation of we just saw about if you knew everything in advance, you’d think through all these issues. But in reality, we started doing this back in 2009 and 2010 when the Chevy Volt first went to market. We knew our employees were really excited about this vehicle and wanted to buy it. And we didn’t know a lot about how workplace charging would work and where it would lead.

So I’ll give you the sort of history of it. We just did it and we learned things along the way and we adapted as we’ve gone along.

So just a synopsis here. We have over 500 workplace charging spots at GM sites around the country. Twenty-five assembly plants have also installed workplace charging because there is a lot of excitement at GM about electric vehicles even though most of our assembly plants aren’t manufacturing or producing parts for the electric vehicle. You can see there is sort of a very broad excitement around the country.

In the parentheses up there at the top, some of the details about what we have. We have attached about 19% of our charge spots to solar canopies where we bring some solar PV as well. So this is all part of our sustainability thinking and planning in some ways. A couple of them are already ADA-friendly just in case rules change going forward and we want to make sure that we’re anticipating where rules can go with ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act.

Four hundred charging stations – many more chargers behind the fence is where we do our testing, where executives park and all that kind of stuff. I’m not counting those. These are 500 for the employees and visitors to our campuses to plug in their vehicle at no cost. Thirty one percent of those chargers right now are Level 1 – 120 volts outlets – and then the majority – 69%, almost 70% – are 240 volts, or what we call Level 2 spots.

You can see how predominately these workplace charge spots are in Michigan, of course, where we have all of our engineering, research, development proving grounds, business headquarters, and so on. So Michigan sites are really heavy into workplace charging. In fact, we hardly ever have enough there, whereas in a lot of the other regional places around the country, there is adequate charging right now, at least for the near-time future.

If you could go to the next slide please.

Slide 20

BRITTA GROSS: Alright, so I use the words in the title “developing Level 2 and Level 1 strategy” because we do adapt as we go along. Again, we didn’t know everything we could have known six years ago, now we know a lot more. So we always feel it is a very learning-by-doing activity, so we are trying to be very adaptable and flexible as we go along.

So in the beginning we installed all Level 2 EVSE. This was back in the 2009, ’10, even ’11 time period. Why did we choose to install Level 2 EVSEs back then? Well, we wanted to better understand hardware that was being supplied out there because we knew that our customers would be seeing this kind of hardware in the public space for public chargers. So we wanted our hands on as much hardware as we could possibly get, install them on our sites so that we could firsthand understand are we seeing issues of the hardware, how are they holding up, the liabilities, their availability, and so on. So we went across the border and bought as many different hardware brands as we could and put them in place.

Another reason to go with Level 2, we found that it’s obviously much more convenient and satisfying for EV drivers. It’s a faster charge. If you come in in the morning and plug in, you can almost always fully charge your vehicle by noon in case you want to go out and do some errands. Such is the comfort level, it’s satisfying to know that you’re getting as much juice as you can in these vehicles in the shortest amount of time – at least before you get into the DC fast charging arena.

The second reason why it’s so satisfying is that you don’t have to pull your own charge cord out of your home. And so that’s another thing. We thought about winters in Michigan and, kind of, messy roads and the snow and maybe even rainy days and its cold, and you have outlets, we knew folks were going to have to pull out their cords. You can buy stuff on the market today but back then you couldn’t. So you have the cord set that comes with your car. You pull it out, you plug into that outlet over there, and plug in your car on the other side of the cord, and you’re good.

So it was much more convenient just to slide into a Level 2 spot. It comes with a cord, you unhook it from the wall, plug it into your car, and off you go. Much more convenient and more satisfying. We get it all the way around.

The rule of thumb when we were doing a lot of the Level 2s and banks of them was we just – because we’ve got big, big, big parking lots, or big, complex parking garage structures, we assumed, based on experience, that we would probably have to budget $10,000 per charge spot even when we’re doing a bank of EVSEs.

So let’s say we put a bank of 8 Level 2 EVSEs in place, if we were just sort of projecting a cost, well, what’s it probably going to cost, we would say $10,000 times the bank of 8 so $80,000 for that job. Again, long distances and very large parking lots. Not the scenario when we’re talking about with some of our regional offices that just had to go underneath the sidewalk or something. Very different.

So we peppered all of our sites, especially in southeast Michigan, with Level 2 EVSEs for those reasons. But then why did we start to look at Level 1 outlets? Well, budgets became a reality. We had a lot of special budgets set up in the very beginning to do these workplace charges. But over time, those special budgets were depleted, the company – the programs are working different items now, and so we had to be much more practical about charging solutions. So in looking for more cost-effective charging options, we started to look at Level 1 outlets.

We have found that after installing a lot of them that the outlets turn out to be extremely reliable, you don’t have equipment failure, they’re simple, so it’s very, very simply for us to install outlets.

There was also a realization over time that more than just a few employees could not get out to the parking lots at noon to sort of politely move their vehicles out so someone else could get into a Level 2 spot. It’s winter, it’s cold, the parking lots are massive, you got to walk 13 minutes to get to your car and 15 minutes back. It just wasn’t really practical always. And so there was this idea if … we sort of what we call “trickle charge” the vehicles all day long, they’ll get full charge by 5 o’clock when they want to go home, maybe that is actually a pretty good option in some cases. So we like that idea as well.

And then the other budget saving idea was – we do a lot of ongoing projects in our parking lots. There is always something being done to rework electrical over here, put in new lighting in the parking lot, and so on. And it was really obvious to our facilities guys that really champion and make sure the installations happen – it was really clear they could sort of squeeze in a couple outlets every time they had a regular electric job, something on the wall or in pavement. And so it became very simple to just include it as a policy outlets every time we’re doing any kind of electrical work in our parking lots or garages.

Our rule of thumb having done a bunch of Level 1 outlets now, too, is that if we were going to guess what it would cost to put in outlets, there’s still some trenching, some stuff you kind of have to do. We just sort of estimate about $1,000 per charge spot.

Again, same deal – big parking lots, a lot of trenching from time to time. A lot easier to do the Level 1 but there is still a cost typically associated with it, unless we can – as I said, in that sub-bullet there, just read for this point, sometimes we can just squeeze it into an ongoing job. We couldn’t even calculate what the cents were for the extra 30 minutes it took someone to throw two outlets onto the wall or on the pavement. So about $1,000 a charge spot in that scenario.

If you could go to the next slide please.

Slide 21

BRITTA GROSS: And so the history then of what we did – I kind of mentioned this – from 2010 to 2012, all of our installations were all Level 2 EVSEs. So a little bit more expensive. We did not do network systems. We decided sort of to go for simplicity. Again, we’re not charging for charging. We wanted our employees to see this as a real incentive to getting an EV. We’re very interested in encouraging our employees to buy electric vehicles and learn as they are learning with us. You know, what do we see at the workplace? You know, Level 2 versus Level 1? What are the goods – the pros and the cons? So, you know, early on, our eyes were on flexibility.

We know that one day, the model may change. We know that one day, maybe we would want to charge for charging because we can’t probably outfit every parking spot and that will happen one day if we have an enormous amount of employees purchasing these vehicles. But maybe some cost structure will come in at that point where we would have to network these stations. But for now, they’re pretty dumb chargers or just an outlet, of course, that doesn’t have any brains behind it either.

So originally, everything is Level 2. In 2013 to ‘15, we start a whole phase of pretty much only Level 1 outlet installation. We have no more money in the budget. Let’s start a stand of Level 1 outlets and learn what that looks like, and I’d say that now where we’ve landed in 2015 and ’16 is, we’re looking at both options. They’re both very viable options. Level 2 if you have some budget for it. It’s a very nice to do, especially, you know, in uncovered parking garages. But Level 1 is a perfectly good incentive. The employees are enthusiastic about just having access to an outlet at work.

So it works for us, it supports us, sort of the practicality of it. And both options fit very well with our sustainability plan as a corporation. It’s a sort of big, very visible kind of project not only to grow the EV market, but it goes along with all our objectives for renewable energy and landfill-free sites and even wildlife habitats around a lot of our factories. So it’s just part of the strategy for doing what’s right and trying to get folks in these vehicles.

So we look at both of these options today. We look at what the site electrical capacity constraints are – if there any at any site. We look at the budgets, of course. And then just for example, from 2015 to ’16, we installed during that period, 24 more Level 1 and 61 Level 2s to expand workplace charging at 4 sites. More charging at existing workplace charging sites, and then we added charging to 9 more sites. And typically when we’re adding charging, those are typically the Level 2s whereas if we are going in and expanding onsite, often today we’ll just do it with a Level 1.

And then just the last slide I have for you. One thing we learned maybe about two years ago, so this wasn’t even originally. But maybe two years ago. It occurred to us, we probably needed to start documenting – you can go to the next slide please – we needed to start documenting-

Slide 22

BRITTA GROSS: -what are the right behaviors, what are the right etiquette guidelines for using workplace charging so that people sort of keep in mind the rules? And this true for both the EV drivers but also the non-EV drivers. Why are we doing it? Why is it important? What to keep in mind?

And so we ginned up, based on a writer named Brad Berman. He wrote an article a few years ago “Eight Rules of Electric Vehicle Charging Etiquette.” I contacted him and said, hey, I love your list. Do you mind if I take your list as a sort of baseline for me at GM, and I’m going to modify it and adapt for GM, but I’ll always give you credit for it.

So I put this out there in the public space if anyone is ever interested in just taking something that we’ve generated for General Motors, talking about safety first and first come, first serve, and it’s a privilege, not a right to use workplace charging, I’d be happy to share this. Change it – but you don’t have to give me any credit for it, but there it is. We’ve done the work at General Motors to help others just, you know, make sure you’ve sort of thought through some of these ideas and you have a piece of paper that you can hand out or post it to folks who are new to this to understand, one, what do you expect of me as an EV driver?

And with that, I’d like to pass it back to Margaret and the others. Thank you.

{MARGARET SMITH: Thank you so much, Britta. Next we will hear about workplace charging at Coca-Cola from Eric Ganther.

Slide 23

MARGARET SMITH: Mr. Ganther has been with Coca-Cola for the past five years. He is the Commuter Transportation Manager of overseeing shuttle buses, corporate bike share, parking, transit subsidies, rideshare, and interactions with local governmental planning. Now I’ll hand it over to Eric.

ERIC GANTHER: Hello everybody from Atlanta. Hope everybody is having a great day.

Thank you very much, Margaret, for putting this together. I think this is really helpful. I wish that something like this would have been available to us going on five years ago when we began our program. We kind of had to learn on our own what to do, what not to do, and listen to our employees and learn from the experience of our early adopters of the EV movement.

Next slide, please.

Slide 24

No spoken content; skipped quickly to Slide 25

Slide 25

ERIC GANTHER: So here’s what we have at our headquarters campus in Atlanta. We have 81 Level 1 spaces that are spread around our employee garages. We do 14 Level 2 spaces, again, spread around similarly, one included for our visitors who come to campus. And one fast charger that was donated to us by Nissan, which was very helpful.

So the – just kind of piggybacking on the discussion earlier from GM, we, you know, vehicle-making is not our business. We make soda. And so this was something we kind of came into as a means to support our employees who were thinking outside the box. And so we looked at it from a cost perspective pretty much from day 1. We wanted to provide the amenity to our employees but not throw a lot of money.

So we looked at places on the campus where we could affordable use the electrical infrastructure that we already had and then install mostly Level 1 circuits – dedicated circuits – to those locations, and then when we maxed out that electric box, we moved onto the next one. And as a result, we’ve been able to get the largest single site EV charging program in Georgia. We’re very proud of it.

We’ve got about 160 of our employees who have electric vehicles, and they’ve maintained the EVs even though the State of Georgia no longer offers the generous credit that it did for a number of years. So that’s been really interesting to see how our support of this program has really kept people engaged with electric vehicles.

If you’ll notice here on this slide, you see the 50% charge piece, and the idea for us was always, we’d give you half a tank. We wanted to make sure you can get home. Atlanta is a fairly spread out city, so the average commute one-way distance is about 25 miles, and we had a number of EV drivers who were 30, 35, even 40 miles away. So they really saw the benefit of the cost savings compared to a gasoline engine. And then, of course, the environmental benefits from doing that. So we decided that this was a nice way to do it: We’d give folks half a charge over the course of a day.

How we deal with Level 2 – our Level 2 spaces – is that we have time slots. So there will be one Level 2 machine in 4 time slots. Four parking spaces each with a slot: 7 to 10, 10 to 1, 1 to 4, and 4 to 7 o’clock. And you can – there is a sign there that says the hours and acknowledges by parking in this space, you allow your neighbor to unplug you, which has been very successful. I’m really proud of us. We have worked well together, and people who are anxious about not having enough EV range have really come together and helped each other out. So that if somebody was in a pickle and they needed that Level 2 space, somebody would open up for them.

We have a chatter group, which is our internal communication that we set up for our EV drivers and that allowed some communication between them. It allowed us to build a community that way, which was very helpful. Then once we did this and we had this running for a few years, I realized that really – and my apologies to our friends at General Motors – but the parking deck where the chargers were looked effectively like a Nissan parking lot because they were largely Nissan LEAFs that people were buying.

And so Nissan offered us the fast charger. They said, “Hey, we’ve got a fast charger.” It’s CHAdeMO, and, you know, for cars that have the port – and it’s important to know that not every car has the fast charge port and not every car can use a CHAdeMO head. So if you’re considering that, consider that very carefully: Who has what aspect.

Next slide please.

Slide 26

ERIC GANTHER: So this was our user feedback.

As we grew the program, and we grew it slowly. We added 10 Level 1 charging stations our first year, and then we added 20 the next year, and then 30 after that, something along those lines, we didn’t add any more than we had demand for because I didn’t really relish the thought of going into the senior leadership and saying, “Well, we put in a bunch of EV spots but nobody’s using them.”

So we followed demand, we were always just a little bit behind it. We think that’s a pretty good place to be. We held focus groups and our third one was last year in February. We had 140 people show up. And the challenge at that point was that we didn’t have quite enough resources for them, and we were looking at some solutions for how we could share. And we explored some different options which were interesting. One was to have alternate day charging so that some people could do Monday, Wednesday, Friday, some people could do Tuesday, Thursday. We did another one where we did a split day where some would charge in the morning and others would charge in the afternoon.

What we found was that morning / afternoon charge was very challenging, to get people to coordinate so that they could move their cars at the same time. Didn’t really work. So we decided not to do the morning and afternoon one. And the alternate day was actually more useful for people. We found that people who lived within 15 or 20 miles didn’t really have to have a charge every single day. That they could go a day without.

That was an interesting learning for them and for us. And, in fact, I will say that over time, the electric vehicle community has gotten much more comfortable just with the reality of charging. What it takes. They have more experience with it. Their anxiety levels a lot lower. When newbies come in, then they can see other people who are comfortable with it. That it’s OK. That reduces the anxiety around it. When we first started, there was a lot of anxiety because people were new, everybody was new to an electric vehicle.

When – the input that we got. People – there was a strong desire for additional infrastructure. Again, primarily from the newbies who were anxious about not having enough. People were willing to pay if we would provide more chargers. But that wasn’t really a money issue because we weren’t looking for money for it.

In fact, when we considered charging for charging – the charging, the acquiring of money cost more than the provision of the electricity. So it didn’t really make any sense to spend a whole bunch more money just to get a little bit of money back. So the company decided, no, were just going to give it away. It’s about 80, 85 cents a day. OK. And now that’s, now we’re getting all the green street cred as a result of it. Our CO2 reductions are significant as a result of all of this. They said, that’s cheap. Let’s go for it.

Our customers wanted more careful internal communication so we set up that internal chatter group. They wanted to have us tell them what to do. And they really didn’t like this idea of moving the car in the middle of the day.

Next slide please.

Slide 27

ERIC GANTHER: So we did a survey and this was an important piece of how we made our decisions. And I highly recommend this to do to maybe just drivers in general to get a sense of their interest in electric vehicles. And then you can do focus groups with the ones who say they are really interested.

So we did, we looked at this, said what is the dependence level? How often do people really need it? And some needed it every day, about 28% needed it every day. And a larger group actually needed it every other day. And then there were quite a few folks who really didn’t need the workplace charging. They were, you know, they’ve got a nice set up at home. It’s nice to have it at work, but it’s not strictly necessary. A few didn’t use it at all. And then some were seasonal users. So winter, as it turns out, is a higher draw on EV batteries than summer. Heaters take up more energy than air conditioners, which was a surprise to me.

We also looked at their one-way distance, and you can see about, more than 20% of our drivers were exceeding 30 miles one-way distant. So those were probably the folks who needed it every day.

Next slide please.

Slide 28

ERIC GANTHER: So the fast charger was something that Nissan gave to us, and they also paid to install it. It was very helpful to have. Again for the anxiety reduction that comes with it. Knowing that there is a fast charger available in case you are in a pickle is really helpful for people. And what we did, we experimented with some different ways of how we would manage that and how we would manage access to it.

So what we came up with – and it’s worked fairly well – was to treat the fast charger as a room in our Outlook reservation tool. And so that allowed people to book it for 30 minutes and others could see who they were. We asked people to put their phone number on the invite and then also to leave their phone number on their dashboard in case they forgot to move the car because occasionally that would happen.

So we set up a couple of spaces by the fast charger just to make sure in case somebody forgets to move their car that somebody else who’d had the next time slot would still be able to get access. And then we asked people to stay with their car while they’re charging. That didn’t work out quite so well. But it was still – it’s been a very useful thing and we’re really appreciative of Nissan of donating that to us.

And I think that’s it for me. Thank you very much.

MARGARET SMITH: Thank you so much, Eric.

Slide 29

MARGARET SMITH: Last, we have Michael Huggins from Portland International Airport. Mr. Huggins has been with the Port of Portland as their Senior Manager of Landside Operations for the past 9-1/2 years. His responsibilities include the management of the-over-17,000 stalls public and employee parking operation, the airport parking shuttlebus operation, and ground transportation regulations and operation. I’ll hand things over to Michael.

Slide 30

MICHAEL HUGGINS: Thank you and thank you for having me. As was said earlier, PDX Airport has over 17,000 public and employee parking spaces. Because the airport itself is managed and operated by the Port of Portland, we provide the services and the facilities for all of the employees that operate here at the airport as well.

If you can see on the map here on the bottom right, we have an employee lot that services most of the employees at the airport. There’s about 2,400 spaces in that. Our challenge is its proximity to the airport. It’s about 2-1/2 miles away, so it doesn’t really make it feasible for us to put in the DC fast charge or even Level 2 charging out there because we wouldn’t expect employees to spend, you know, 45 minutes of their work day to commute out there and move their car and commute back.

So for us, we have to evaluate all of the needs with the parking. So we look at the airlines practices, the airport employees as well as the passengers, and we’ve come up with a matrix where we can evaluate length-of-stay.

Slide 31

MICHAEL HUGGINS: And so for the closer-in, short-term parking, the average stay is around 35 minutes. So we did put some facilities in there to fast charge cars with Level 2, and I’ll talk about those in a second. And then also, the length-of-stay for the economy lot exceeds 5 days, so it’s not prudent of us to put something out there that would require somebody to move the car, or even in our case, because of our geographic layout, share in the charging facility.

So we have 9,000 employees that work directly within the airport environment. The Port of Portland employs about 450 of those employees and the rest are either with the airlines or concessionaires like Nike, Made in Oregon, Henry’s Tavern. Some of our additional tenants are shown on this slide, as well our federal agencies with the TSA, CBP, FBI.

So we have approximately 6,500 of those 9,000 that use our employee parking lot. The rest commute via light rail, some of them carpool, they share that parking access. So for us, we had to kind of balance the needs our employee parking group and the number of vehicles we have out there serving the area.

So what you have installed is about 2,400 spaces out there. We have about 6,500 users so you can see, because we’re a 24-hour operation, it’s pretty well balanced in that lot.

Next slide, please. Can you go to the next slide, please?

Slide 32

MICHAEL HUGGINS: Thank you.

So we installed 42 Level 1 fast chargers throughout the employee and the economy lot. Our employee lot has 18 of those chargers, and our economy lot is split into two difference sections: 12 in the red lot, 12 in the blue lot.

We anticipate our customers that – both employees as well as the public can charge their vehicle fully in about 8 hours. The cost to the Port is not much at all. Because each of these lots are actually pay-to-use, our employees are charged $30 a month to park out in the employee lot, and then the customers are charged $10 a day if they’re airline employees. We’ve incorporated those costs into that fee structure and don’t charge the employees for that.

So we actually chose Level 1 chargers for ourselves because of the simplicity of the system. They’re very easy to use. We like this particular unit because of the retractable cord, and we avoid having the trip hazards here.

Portland, Oregon is a very wet climate, but we also have a couple snowy days here, so we looked at the all-weather unit and their durability in those kind of situations.

We don’t charge our users, so it’s free to the users. Like Eric said, it’s expensive to recuperate that revenue, so we didn’t look at it ever as a revenue stream for us. So it’s “charge the cars and not the people” is kind of our motto.

We are expanding our program at the end of the month. We have a new employee parking lot that is adjacent to our corporate headquarters here with the Port of Portland. We’ll be adding 15 more units into that facility. It’s going to be paved, so we’re hoping the weather cooperates and it should open October 31st, but we’ll see.

Next slide please.

Slide 33

MICHAEL HUGGINS: Four our short-term parking in the garage, we actually have 3 dual-port charging stations that are Level 2. We also offer some Level 2 charging for our Port of Portland fleet. We have 4 stalls there, 2 dual-ports. We have about 56 electric, bi-fuel, flex fuel, and hybrid vehicles, and electric vehicles within our Port of Portland fleet that serve not only the airfield but also the surrounding community because the Port of Portland also owns the seaport down on the waterfront as well as two other general aviation airports. And those vehicles have to go back-and-forth.

Our utilization on the short-term garage is pretty high. Here in the slide photo we just have a couple vehicles in it. I think that was taken on the second day of operation. But we’re pretty close to 90, 95% utilization. The vehicles, while we were hoping they’d be able to charge in just a couple hours and be out of there, considering that short term’s average length-of-stay is 35 minutes, but we’re often seeing people upgrade their parking from paying $21 to paying $27 just so they can have their cars charged when they return.

We have additionally installed a couple Level 2 charging stations within our airport valet program. And people can pull their cars in to the valet, and we’ll have them charged when we return those cars to them.

Next slide please.

Slide 34

MICHAEL HUGGINS: So as we move forward – and understanding the needs of our customers – we definitely do have to expand our program. We anticipate installing another 12 charging stations within our short-term garage that are going to be Level 2 … Potentially … We’re hoping for Level 1. I’m sorry, the slide is incorrect.

Because of the length-of-stay and people staying overnight, we need to expand the program. And for us as an airport managing the capacity the garages, it’s best for us to make sure that these customers are in an area that’s easy to identify but also that promotes the use of EV charging. And understanding that our customers do in some cases have the range anxiety. Knowing exactly where their car is and that the charging is available is big for us.

We put that all – all that information – is available on our website as far as where the charging stations are. I think our next step, we’d really like to get network charging, not only so that we can monitor the actual usage of the charging stations themselves, but also we can put that information out to our customers. We’d expand our program in the employee parking lots as well to make sure that they also have real-time information about their cars and available charges and best utilization for them.

For us, like I said earlier, it’s charge the cars and not the people. We’re really pushing for a holistic airport experience that exceeds those of other airports. And we really value that customer service.

Thank you.

Slide 35 / Slide 36

MARGARET SMITH: Thank you very much, Michael.

We greatly appreciate Britta, Eric, and Michael taking the time to be on today’s webinar and talk with us. I’ll hand things back over to Nay to facilitate answering questions. Eric had to leave a couple of minutes ago, but there are still other panelists available to answer questions for a little bit longer.

NAY CHEHAB: Thank you, Margaret.

Since it’s past 3 o’clock right now, we’re going to be taking a couple of questions and stay online for the next 5 to 10 minutes. And we have a record of all of the questions that came in, so we will be reaching out by email with answers to your questions. And just as a reminder, this webinar is going to be posted online later, and we’re going to be sending the link to the webinar and the PowerPoint presentation to all of the registrants to the webinar.

One of the questions – I think, Margaret, you’ll be able to answer that – is what features that are important to workplaces are available with Level 2 but are not available with Level 1? And is there a technical reason that Level 1 can’t offer these features?

MARGARET SMITH: Can we back up in the slides to the network slide? Slide 13? So network Level 2 station can provide additional features like tracking how much energy is consumed by people when they’re charging. You’ll be able to see how much it has used. You can calculate something for a company’s sustainability report saying that with your electric vehicle – or your workplace charging program, you’re reducing a certain amount of greenhouse gas emissions. That could be appealing to some companies. Fits in their motivation to providing workplace charging.

The charging units could allow employees to pay for the charge. So to use an account or credit card or key fob and swipe that and get charged for the electricity. If there is an issue with the charging station, there could be a customer support team. There’s a variety of benefits for choosing a networked unit.

Regarding having a Level 1 unit with those features, it’s just not – those options are just not on the market. Maybe there just isn’t as much of a business case for that, so they’re currently not available.

NAY CHEHAB: Thank you, Margaret.

Another question we’re going to take is whether – for the panelists, actually— did you see an increase in employees buying or using EVs with the installation of charging stations?

BRITTA GROSS: This is Britta Gross at GM. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Early adopters flocked to these vehicles without much persuasion. They’re waiting for them when they come on the market and buy them. It’s the follow on, it’s these sort of fast followers, or others who are just a little bit more reticent, a little bit more reluctant about technology that just want to see it proven.

So what we’ve often said about workplace charging – and that we’ve proven it out at GM ourselves – is that it’s like this virtual showroom. A dealer showroom in every parking lot because you see these banks of vehicles sitting there doing something, and you’re walking by every morning. And it finally one day catches your eye and you’re wondering, “Wow, is that, you know, Jim or Sue getting out of their car? I’ve always wondered what that was.” And so it’s just this word-of-mouth that moves through the organization.

So we have trouble because, especially, it’s sort of masses of workers and employees up in Michigan at the southeast Michigan site. We have a lot of word-of-mouth. Just this large volume of EV sales and adoption from people who were sort of more reticent than the folks in 2010. So, absolutely, we have trouble keeping up with demand is what I really want to say about these big sites.

MICHAEL HUGGINS: At the Port of Portland, it’s the same. The growth is tremendous – the number of vehicles. It’s the same kind of thing. As the employees pass by the stalls, which are more convenient than some of the other stalls, they realize there’s not only the savings in the fuel cost, they also get to save their own time as they park a lot closer. And the cost of all these vehicles has come down quite a bit and there’s a lot more of them on the market, so they can actually get into them for fairly cheap.

JIM FRANCFORT: Nay, may I add something? This is Jim.

NAY CHEHAB: Yes, Jim, go ahead.

JIM FRANCFORT: This also opens up, I think, an important market for people that live in multi-dwelling units where it can often be difficult to have a daily access to charging. And so workplace charging can play a very important role to that segment of the population.

NAY CHEHAB: Thank you, Jim.

One last question we’re going to take, and I think anyone can answer this question. Is there a rule of thumb about the number of chargers per employee?

BRITTA GROSS: So, Britta, GM again. In the beginning, when we didn’t know what to do, we kind of thought it would be great if we could just get one-to-one correspondence, obviously. And so we undershot in some areas like in southeast Michigan, where every one of our sites was immediately over-subscribed. And then in some other sites, we overachieved. And, again, you don’t know what your adoption is going to look like, and we want to be better prepared than not in some of our areas.

So I think that even today, I don’t think we have any, we don’t have any ambition to sort of solve everybody’s charging issues. In fact, there’s a nice self-selection that goes on where a lot of folks, you know, that work on these programs, they go, “Hey, I’ve got the Volt. I’ve got the backup engine. I’ll let the other guys charge their vehicles first that may have longer commutes. You know, I know I’ll make it home on my battery range, you know, without it.” So there’s a lot of nice sort of self-sorting out of “how badly do I need the charge?” and let others.

And I guess I’d like to echo what Eric said at Coca-Cola, and that is that we also have our very own, I would call those informal internal site where the folks can all get together and they can share information. “Hey, I’m moving my car in 30 minutes if anyone wants to get something out at Milford or, you know, put their car in the spot.” Those kinds of things.

There is a very great camaraderie among EV drivers that are just trying to sort it out for everybody. And so I don’t think that we’re trying to get one-on-one. You know, we certainly want more charging right now. I think that, you know, in general, there’s folks that have the longest possible ranges are probably going to self-select into the right technologies for them.

NAY CHEHAB: Thank you, Britta. Since it’s ten past three, we’re going to stop the webinar right now. But as I said earlier, we do have a record of all of the questions that are being sent into the chat box, so we will be getting back to you with the answers that you’re looking for.

Thank you so much for our panelists, Margaret, and Jim for being on the call. And thank you for the listeners who dialed in. We will be in touch with you soon with the link to the webinar and the presentation. Thank you.