Charging Infrastructure Forum Recap

Charging Infrastructure
Moderator: Dr. Russell Lefevre
Speakers:
Justin Murrill, AMD
Blake Dickenson, AeroVironment, Dir customer service
Rachel May, Austin Energy

United States' Goal = 1 million Electric Vehicles (EV) on US roads by 2015

Blake Dickenson of AeroVironment (AV)– Charging Infrastructure Roll-Out. AV manufacturers Energy technologies and Unmanned Aircraft systems.
AV has 20 years of battery charging experience. They promote EV level 2 public charging.
Patent pending in energy storage – battery space system such as apartment complex charging.
EVSE – Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment. Must be UL – listed. Connectors are not live until fully connected and communicating to the car. Common connector for Level 1 and 2 ….doing away with multi-standard connectors for obvious reasons.
AV is doing a lot of residential installs today: site assessment (mostly on-line) – Customer Portal – Installation- EVSE Service/Diagnostic tool (charging units are coming out far earlier than cars are arriving on the market) – Customer Training –
Thoughts on Special EV Rates encouraging off-peak charging
Many utilities are making it expensive by dropping a second meter (adding thousands of dollars to installation costs)
EVSE as a sub-meter – no additional costs.
Issues AV running into:
1. Permit and inspection issues from the cities; inconsistency of municipalities. Public process and red tape is slowing down permit process. Oregon is a good example of successful permitting. Statewide permitting process.

What is the future: EV Ecosystem:
Commercial
Residential

NRG EvGo expanding using their “freedom Stations” started in Houston and expanding out throughout Texas.
Using a “subscription service” offset from your home utility bill

Speaker Justin Murrill. AMD Global Sustaining Manager.
AMD is focused on charging at the workplace.
AMD started installing stations 5 month ago, well before release of EV’s. AMD
63% want EV’s but want their employer to provide charging stations.
Commitment to environment
Federal pilot installation project.
Federal Tax credits.
13 early city adoption of charging Stations.
AMD is committed to jumpstarting the EV market.

Challenges:
Unknown station use
Rate of market adoption uncertain
Increased AMD energy use – which proved nominal
Loss of high demand parking
EV availability still limited.
Next steps:
Continue promoting availability to our employees, vehicle options and government rebates
Monitor station use and emission savings

Rachel May, Austin Energy, Sr. Research Analyst. Emerging Transportation Technologies.
Content of program to get charging infrastructure out to home within 1-2 years.
Austin Energy preparing for 36,000 PEV charging in Austin area.
The concern for energy is the clustering issue of several charges occurring at the same time (in same neighborhood) which impacts transformer with the potential of costly electric grid upgrades.
2 programs:
PIP Plug in Partners rebate program up to 1500 toward purchase/install of level 2 CS.
Home charge mgmt pilot
PEV communication – w/ vehicle, with EVSE between appliances.
Plug In Everywhere" is the public charging focus.
Home charging will meet most of driver’s daily needs.
So why need public charging? Convenience factor. Belongs where you get your groceries, where people are congregating; soccer games, bar/restaurants.
Austin partnering with Coulomb Charging stations.
Working with community by offering free CS availability, free to station host,
Focus at hotels, hospitals tech campuses, property owners, national retailers.
Austin’s goal is that no EV driver will be more than 5 miles from a public charger. Austin’s goal to provide access to all charging stations with a single card.

Overview of this Forum: Very informative from a 500 foot level view of Charging Stations and infrastructure rolling out within the next few years. The focus is on both residential and public charging – residential being the priority focus as the majority of EV charging will occur at the home. Speakers also discussed the advantages and challenges and costs faced by charging companies and utilities.
-Gary Perman

Austin Energy Leadership

President Jensen opened Friday's conference festivities with an overview of the conference's goals and gave all attendees a taste of things to come throughout the remainder of the weekend. He then introduced keynote speaker Karl Rabago, Vice President at Austin Energy.

Karl Rabago's talk centered around the concept of leadership in developing sustainable energy sources that involves crafting an agenda inspired by vision, helping people buy into that vision, and then supporting these people as they diligently work to move that vision forward. Municipal electric utilities are the hub of energy services innovation today and Austin Energy's mission statement is to provide a source of clean, renewable, affordable, and reliable energy to it's customers while also providing excellent customer service. Climate change is a reality and the only way that we as a society can start addressing this valid concern is to start changing the way that we do things and the way that we live our lives. Today's world is complicated and is further complicated by the fact that our everyday lifestyle is centered around devices that require a steady source of energy to operate properly (gas powered cars, handheld devices, etc). Think about the number of devices you own that require charging. Our own habits need to change and our priorities need to be put into perspective if we intend to be successful in the long run. Do we want to start investing in clean and renewable energy or do we want to start investing in additional infrastructure to support our growing lifestyle?

The city of Austin has a long term goal to utilize 35% renewable energy and achieve a 20% drop in CO2 emissions by 2020 by introducing a clean portfolio of options. Today's strategies include electric transportation, low income energy and weatherization, energy storage, smart grid & Pecan Street Project, Zero Energy Capable Homes by 2015, Austin Climate Protection Plan, Municipal Energy Efficiency Leadership, and Green Economy. With these options Austin has already achieved a +900MW energy efficiency savings, started utilizing 11% renewable energy (all volunteer supported), and lowered the average consumption with rates 15% lower than average. With this it has still shown itself to be both highly efficient and extremely reliable. To highlight Austin Energy's leadership in the renewable energy arena, Karl put up a chart stating that Texas could have saved $4.58 Billion in one year if all customers had been Austin Energy customers.

President Obama has stated multiple times that one of his goals is to dramatically increase the number of electrical cars on the road by 2020. With this being said, one of the problems faced is whether the current electrical infrastructure is capable of supporting multiple electrical vehicles charging at one time, referred to as "dumb charging", during peak hours. How do we address this issue? The options at our disposal is to change the pricing model, have charging stations at the work places, utilize solar energy, or simply invest the time and energy to improve the technology to become more efficient. There are a number of solutions and all have pros and cons so finding the right one will take time and a substantial monetary investment in both the public and private sector.

Karl concluded his presentation by stating that leadership requires vision and leadership is rewarded. Being able to reap greater benefits will require solving for multiple variables but it's important to keep in mind that this is a learning environment and mistakes will be made but the real tragedy for future generations would be if we did not learn from these mistakes.

Contact Karl R Rabago (karl.rabago@austinenergy.com)