Cohousing-L Mailing List: Electrical vehicle charging stations

[Katie Henry (katie-henry]

Our community is under construction, about six months away from move-in, and 
we're thinking about EV charging stations.

We will have 36 homes and a mix of garages, carports, and surface parking. We 
currently have a vague plan to install some extra 240-volt circuits during 
construction and run underground conduit to various locations to support the 
addition of charging stations as residents acquire EVs. This raises lots of 
follow-up questions about equipment standardization, Level 1 vs. Level 2, 
adequate electrical capacity, networked vs. not-networked, metering/billing, 
etc. Also, I have concerns about cars being charged catching on fire.

Should we consider installing a single Level 3 charging station shared by all 
owners? Instead of each EV owner installing their own Level 1/2 charging 
station and leaving their cars trickling overnight, everyone would use the 
Level 3 station since a car will fully charge in 15 or 20 minutes. 

No question a Level 3 is more expensive. I've reached out to some vendors for 
estimates but don't have any solid numbers yet. The electrical infrastructure 
is a big part of the expense. Our electrical work to the site hasn't started 
yet, so now is the time if we're going to do it. Even if it's more expensive, 
it seems like a better long-term solution than the patchwork system we're 
currently envisioning that may run out of capacity in ten years and will always 
have maintenance and administrative overhead.

Anybody have any opinions? Good idea? Terrible idea?

Plan B (semi-seriously) is to approach the service station on the corner about 
splitting the cost of a Level 3 charging station so members can go there and we 
don't have to have any of the charging infrastructure on the site. That would 
be my preference.

Katie Henry
Heartwood Commons - Tulsa