Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: question re maintenance costs of a pedestal for an EV charging station that would charge 2 cars

[Ken Winter (kenatsun]

Sunward Cohousing just installed 4 chargers a few months ago.  We had
extensive community process about where they would be located (answer: in
the least desirable parking spaces in our otherwise open parking lot) and
what the policy on parking there would be (answer, for now: the 4 spots are
reserved for parking and, of course, charging EVs).  We chose the latter
over an alternative rule – only EVs in those spots *and only while charging*
– because the alternative rule would mean that EVs would be taking up open
parking spaces while they were not charging, and the four EV spots would be
empty a lot of the time.

We only have 5 or 6 EVs right now, so contention among them for charger
spaces is minimal.  As the EV population grows, some more organized
scheduling will become necessary.  Sunward uses the Gather
<http://info.gather.coop> app as our online organizer for a lot of things,
and we'll probably use its resource reservation function when we need to
formally schedule these spaces.

~ Ken, from Sunward Cohousing (Ann Arbor, MI)

On Sat, Jul 26, 2025 at 4:27 PM Sharon Villines via Cohousing-L <
cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org> wrote:

> > On Jul 26, 2025, at 2:48 PM, Philip Semanchuk <philip [at] semanchuk.com>
> wrote:
>
> >> A final question I forgot to ask: We have limited parking and there is
> >> concern that an EV charger would take one of the limited open parking
> >> spaces. Was this a concern?
>
> The plan at Takoma Village is to arrange the parking spaces for EV cars
> around the charger(s). If an EV is in the charging space, the other EVs
> would park in an open EV space.
>
> Not sure that is the clearest way to say it. Try this: if there are 4 EV
> cars and 1 charger, one of those cars would be in the charger space and the
> other 3 parked in the other 3 spaces. One space could not be devoted to the
> charger alone.
>
> There was some talk of charging one car every night so there would be an
> automatic changing of parking spaces in the morning and evening as people
> come back and forth from work. People don’t have a good sense of how much
> charging they will need yet so it will be a developing process.
>
> If that doesn’t work, Takoma Village uses CalendarWiz and can devote one
> calendar to the EV schedule.
>
> (Anyone from Takoma Village, please correct this if there have been more
> recent ideas.)
>
> Sharon
> ----
> Sharon Villines
> Riderwood Village, Silver Spring MD
>
> Recently of Takoma Village, Washington DC
>
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