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

[Diana Carroll (dianaecarroll]

We, mosaic commons, unfortunately did not prepare for electric cars so we
are now having to figure it out after the fact.

In our community, we have two types of parking: carports, which were
optional to purchase at the beginning, and general parking lot parking for
those who don't have carports.

  The carports have electricity already installed.  Each carport houses 4-6
cars, but the circuit that provides the electricity has enough power for
one or at most two electric cars. (This is the "we didn't plan for this"
issue.)

So far, two people have purchased electric cars, and both happen to be
people who already owned spots in carports...separate carports,
conveniently.

We required those two owners to install an electricity monitoring device to
keep track of how much electricity their cars use, and reimburse the
community for the cost of that electricity. This works out okay for now
when we have just the two, but totally doesn't scale.

There's a group in our community working on plans to build an additional
carport. ( fortunately we do have space for this.). The new carport would
be built with sufficient electricity for all the spots to have electric
cars.  This will give us an additional 6 or so spots suitable for electric
cars, but will only be available to those who can afford the purchase of a
carport, which is in the vicinity of $8k.

With the new carport in place, our community of 34 units will be able to
support some 10-12 electric cars.  If we need more than that, we are going
to have to do some serious thinking about economical ways to address the
issue.

Less technically difficult but perhaps more challenging are the social
ramifications: other than those with carports, our community parking is
undesignated, and the "best" spots (those closest to the units) are taken
on a first come first served basis.  (Hotly contested, let me tell you!).
If we set up charging spots outside of carports, how do we make sure that
the people with electric cars can access those spots when needed?  Do we
reserve them just for individuals with electric cars?  Is that fair to
everyone else, who are now competing for even fewer "good" spots in the
lot?  We have not yet addressed these questions but I'm guessing before the
decade is out we will need to.

Hope this is helpful.

Diana

On Saturday, February 14, 2015, mburkel [at] juno.com <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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