Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Preparing for electric cars on site

[Jerry McIntire (jerry.mcintire]

Thanks John, I'm glad to hear that Liberty Village has so much opportunity
for charging EVs, and that you are driving two of them!

At Stone's Throw Ecovillage in Wisconsin, we haven't discussed Ev
infrastructure but we have discussed buying a neighborhood electric vehicle
(NEV) which would have a max speed of 35 mph and would be able to do all
the around-town driving our members would want (it's only 3 miles at most
to go anywhere in our small town).

I will advocate for plenty of 120V outlets for level 1 charging (slow, as
John mentioned) in our parking areas. Members with EVs would be expected to
pay something for their electricity use in those spots.

We own a Toyota RAV4 EV and a Prius, which we hope to replace with a
plug-in Prius. We paid to install a level 2 charger (240V) for our EV,
though we haven't started home construction yet! I imagine such charging
stations will continue to be the responsibility of individual EV owners,
until EVs are more popular. At some point I hope the community will put a
level 2 charging station in our visitor parking area-- that may be a few
years.

We are fortunate to have at least two options for "green power" in our
area. The electric utility offers renewable energy credits from renewable
power projects, as a higher rate per kilowatt hour. We have a local
non-profit that offers the same type of credits, but they are all from
in-state renewable projects. It's called REpowerNow http://repowernow.org/
 Maybe other areas have such local generation options also?

Jerry

Jerry McIntire
Stone's Throw Ecovillage, in the heart of Wisconsin's beautiful Driftless
region
http://stonesthrowcommunity.wordpress.com/
1-608-637-6620

On Sun, Feb 15, 2015 at 10:52 AM, John Beutler <jabeutler [at] comcast.net>
wrote:

>
> From Liberty Village Coho in MD
>
> My wife Ann purchased the first plug in in our community, a Nissan Leaf,
> last spring. We have existing 120V outlets at all of our parking lot
> lights, where she has plugged in. She monitored her usage and came up with
> an average kWh/day times the electric utility rate, which is about 7
> cents/kWh. This worked out to about $15/month, which is what she pays the
> community association. Last summer, she investigated wind powered electric
> utilities, and arranged for both our home account and the two community
> association accounts to be all wind power. This adds a bit to the rate, but
> negates the coal-->electricity argument. In December, we purchased a used
> Chevy Volt, and it uses about the same amount of electricity as the Leaf,
> so we've just gone with that for the HOA.
>
> Now 120V charging is rather slow. We're in the process of getting a 240V
> charger put in at our own expense, and this will cut charging time in half.
> We happen to have a convenient spot right next to the electric meter for
> the parking lot where we hope to have a weatherproof box installed for the
> 240V charging line. We haven't quite figured out how to get community
> approval, but don't think there's any opposition since we're footing the
> bill. The 240V charger costs about $450 and the electrician bill looks like
> it will be about $800. Most 240V chargers are installed in garages, so we
> have had to do some research to find one that's weatherproof. While the
> Leaf 120V charging cable has done fine outdoors, the Volt is only sorta
> kinda weather resistant, and I had to replace it after a month of ice and
> snow. This not something that's well documented, so I got it replaced under
> warranty coverage.
>
> Both cars work very well for commuting to work (4 and 13 miles each way
> respectively) and we've almost forgotten how to pump gas, except on longer
> trips, where we take the Volt. The Leaf is a wonderful car too, though it
> takes a bit of getting used to figuring out its range in wintertime, which
> is lower than in summer, as with all battery systems including regular
> hybrids. The wind power deal is a bit tricky - they keep upping the
> "introductory rate" but will renew it if you threaten to change to one of
> the other companies selling the same wind power.
>
> Cheers
>
> JAB
>
>
>
> 2/14/2015 1:28 PM, mburkel [at] juno.com wrote:
>
>> Winslow Cohousing is beginning to recognize that electric cars are here
>> and have started working on a plan.  I see a 2010 cohousing-L posting that
>> asked many of our questions but received NO responses.  In case more
>> communities have looked at the issues since then, I'm restarting that
>> thread.  Our shared electric car died several years ago and hasn't been
>> replaced but 2 members now have electric cars on site and more are
>> expected. From 2010:"I wonder what Cohousing communities are doing to
>> prepare for electric vehicles, owhich are likely to become more common as
>> the plug-in hybrids (Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt) become available. On this
>> list there are a few references to individual with electric cars, but not
>> much in detail or in the last couple of years.
>>   Questions: Where will such cars be parked?How many spaces are you
>> planning for?Who will pay for the infrastructure (outlets, etc)?How will
>> the electricity used by paid for (metered or flat fee paid by the owner, or
>> paid by the community)?Are there objections in the community to supporting
>> electric cars (Examples: "Internal combustion vehicles are more
>> eco-friendly." Or, "Electric cars will be acceptable only after we put in
>> the infrastructure to capture/generate renewable energy ourselves.")? Marci
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