Commercial EV Charging Rates

[storksb]

I've had my FFET for 7 months now and in all that time I have only charged away from home twice and on both occasions at free charging stations. I have two blink chargers within 100 yards of my office but never consider using them due to the excessively high rates they charge, 49c / kwh.  With the cost of gas being as low as it is and the low cost to charge at home I can't ever see paying these  high rates to charge a plug in hybrid such as the Energi or Volt. I know that the companies installing EVSE's need to cover the coast of installation and ongoing maintenance as well as the unit cost of kwh but are they missing out on the PHEV drivers by charging such inflated rates? If the rates were comparable to the equivalent cost running on gas I would certainly use the blink chargers as I do normally have to run 3 or 4 miles per day on gas to get home.

[Hybridbear]

We've never used a pay EVSE either, only the free ones. The pay ones that charge by the hour are particularly tricky, since the amount of kWh dispensed is not counted. A car with only a 3.3 kW onboard charger, like the Energi, will get less electricity over time than a car with a 6.6 kW onboard charger, like the Leaf or Focus Electric. Another potential issue with pay stations that use time is that often times the power is split. Most ChargePoint stations have two J1772 connectors on each pedestal. Most have a maximum rate of 6.6 kW, but this is shared between the two handles. Thus, if both are in use, each car will only get half of the maximum output. If you're paying by time, this could double your cost.

 

Another factor is that the stations often don't meet their published rate. A local free ChargePoint station that we use on occasion says 6.6 kW rate on the display, but since the voltage is only about 195, you really only get about 5.8 kW rate in our Focus Electric. In the Fusion Energi we can only get about 2.7 kW. The reason is that the cars are limited to a certain maximum amperage when charging on L2. The car cannot exceed that amperage to make up for reduced voltage. The Focus Electric is limited to 29 amps max, the Fusion Energi to 14 amps maximum. Another local station will charge the Focus Electric faster than the 6.6 published spec because it runs at about 245-247 volts. The Focus will pull the full 29 amps at 245+ volts which equals about 7.1 kW.

[jeff_h]

Another factor is that the stations often don't meet their published rate. A local free ChargePoint station that we use on occasion says 6.6 kW rate on the display, but since the voltage is only about 195, you really only get about 5.8 kW rate in our Focus Electric.

 

I found the same at the Chargepoint station that I use each day -- there was a Tesla parked a couple spots over and I figured wow I need to go look at the display to see the big power flow number, was kinda let down that it only showed 5.9 kW.   I think the highest I ever saw flowing out to the Fusion Energi (with max of 3.3 kW) was 3.25 kW and highest I've seen yet to the Volt (max rated 3.6 kW) is 3.35 kW.     And then looking at the graph of the charge session, you can tell when someone else plugs in as the outflow steps down by about 10%, at least on the stations (bank of 5) that I use.

[storksb]

It depends on the State whether commercial EVSE providers can charge by the Unit (kwH) or by time. In Virginia per unit charging is allowed but the prices are cost prohibitive in my opinion. Seems that the typical provider business model is to try and recover the initial cost of implementing the EVSE in as few as possible kWh's. I think they are misguided on that approach though, would seem to make more sense to spread the initial costs out more thinly keeping the unit cost down and attracting more EV drivers to use their infrastructure. Mind you I'm a network engineer so I'm not exactly knowledgeable on these matters but I would use the Blink EVSE near my office everyday if the cost was comparable to the cost of equivalent gas.

[jeff_h]

It depends on the State whether commercial EVSE providers can charge by the Unit (kwH) or by time. In Virginia per unit charging is allowed but the prices are cost prohibitive in my opinion. Seems that the typical provider business model is to try and recover the initial cost of implementing the EVSE in as few as possible kWh's. I think they are misguided on that approach though, would seem to make more sense to spread the initial costs out more thinly keeping the unit cost down and attracting more EV drivers to use their infrastructure. Mind you I'm a network engineer so I'm not exactly knowledgeable on these matters but I would use the Blink EVSE near my office everyday if the cost was comparable to the cost of equivalent gas.

 

With Chargepoint, they don't set the rates as those are completely up to the property owner - the property owner pays Chargepoint a monthly/annual fee to manage the station.

 

However I don't know anything about Blink, other than seeing every mention of them note how expensive the rates are.