Open Access Article Originally Published: November 21, 2009
VEVA asked the city of Vancouver to develop regulations to mandate residential infrastructure for electric vehicle charging. The city responded positively and we now have thousands of homes wired for emerging electric vehicles. This is the story of what we went through to achieve this. We hope that others can learn from our experience and enable the infrastructure needed by emerging EVs. Build It and They Will Come.
Vancouver Electric Vehicle Association members sat down three years ago to debate the challenge of promoting electric vehicles. We asked ourselves “What can a small non-profit hobby organization do to bring about the adoption of electric vehicles?”
We realized that it takes a large company to build EVs and we were only a hobby club. We did have a lot of end user experience as many of us had built conversions and drove them daily. We thought we could influence public opinion through promotion at the grass roots level, attending community events and showing our EVs and talking to the public. Our target was to convince 5% of the early adopters (Prius buyers) that “My next car will be electric”. This became our slogan and we attended some 30 public events per year over the past 3 years promoting this.
We garnered media attention doing this and were interviewed for some 30 media articles per year. The media is a very powerful tool to promote, but getting their attention requires actually doing something. The more we did, the more attention we got. The other thing we realized is that politicians pay attention, as the media tend to influence voters. One politician commented to me at a community event: “Your EV is getting more attention than I am”. The politician responded by supporting EVs.
Lobbying governments was also considered. We quickly realized that different governments could only do different things due to jurisdictional restrictions. For example, the federal government controls vehicle safety, provincial governments control highways and which vehicles they allow on them. Cities on the other hand own buildings and manage streets, or so we thought. We brainstormed a number of ideas to present to the City of Vancouver in response to an invitation to act as a local stakeholder in a community outreach effort by the Sustainability Department. Beyond the easy things like parking incentives, access to HOV lanes (which are nice but not earth shattering), we asked them to help build the infrastructure for EVs. We explained that EVs have limited range and need a place to plug in. Virtually no garages or parking spaces in any homes or high-rises or businesses or public parking lots had sufficient power outlets to charge power hungry EVs. We decided to focus on residential parking as that is where the majority of charging will take place. It also could be implemented with by-law changes only and no direct cost to the city, so was more likely to be accepted. Costs are ultimately passed to the end users.
As it turned out, the Building and Electrical Code in Vancouver is administered under the Vancouver Charter: This means what is normally a provincial / state jurisdiction is passed to the city. This was a key factor although we didn't realize at the time just how significant it was. This situation is also unique to Vancouver. We worked with the city staff to draft recommended changes to the local building code. Our original suggestion was to modify Section 9.34.2.6 (d) to say “An electrical outlet per stall, with 120V minimum 15 amps and 240V minimum 30 amps shall be provided for in an attached, built-in or detached garage or carport or outdoor parking space”. The city engaged their resources and then indicated that some of the supporting changes we proposed would have to be put into the electrical code, not the building code. To address this, we modified our request for the building code to simply suggest "outlet for EV charging in every parking space of a residential property" which would include houses, condos and bike rooms.
Paramount to our goal of enabling a lowest cost yet still adequate infrastructure was a realization that Level 1 or slow charging on a standard 120V 15 Amp shared circuit outlet would not suffice for power hungry EVs. To address this we needed to modify the national model Canadian Electrical Code. We went on to work closely with Electric Mobility Canada (EMC), a national level lobby group, to formally request the changes. We quickly joined EMC and then volunteered to participate in the development of Section 86 of the Canadian Electric Code (the US counterpart is Section 625 of the NEC). We proposed a change to the electrical code which evolved through peer review into a requirement for a 120V 20Amp dedicated circuit for level 1. This would yield a charging speed of 10 Km (6 miles) per hour of charging, enough to get 100 Km or 60 miles range on an overnight charge. This is double the national average distance travelled daily in Canada and sufficient for PHEVs, NEVs and low mileage BEVs.
We also realized that the code was written for the technology available in the 1990s (paddles) ,but now most of us had unique chargers that connected conductively to all sorts of higher power 240V outlets. We proposed that receptacles for these charger plugs be specifically approved for use in EV charging and that inductive charging be excluded from the Code.
It is important that the connection to the vehicle be uniform for universal access to charging. The connection at the wall to the grid needs to support whatever a car demands and what ever the grid can supply. As the SAE J1772 standard was still under revision, we simply requested that any approved receptacle be allowed. Thus common EV plugs such as a L6-50R or 14-50 stove or dryer plugs would be allowed. When the J1772 standard is updated along - with the SAE J2836 to define the communications requirements with the grid - new electric vehicle service equipment (EVSE) will emerge in the market and users will be able to simply replace the pre-wired receptacle. It seems today that a 220V 40A supply is the recommended choice of Level 2 best practice. As there aren't any 40A receptacles this translates to a 50A circuit and receptacle which under continuous load at 80% can supply 40A. Likely on board chargers will only draw up to 32A at 220V which is consistent with European standards and will deliver about 33 Km (20 miles) per hour of charging. Although many of us would like to see even faster charging, the cost of this luxury is prohibitive.
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