NHP Technical News
It is worth noting here, that the typical cost of electricity to a
shopping centre is around 10c/kWh. Using a vehicle such as an
Outlander Plug-In Hybrid as an example, the electricity cost to
the shopping centre while the vehicle is charging will be around
35c/hour. By selecting charging equipment with a suitable
maximum charging rate, the cost exposure can be directly
controlled.
Billing for site access, not for the usage
Workplaces are another example where no special arrangements
are needed. Access to the car park is typically restricted to
employees and visitors, to whom provision of EV charging is
provided either as a cost saving measure (in the cases of fleet
vehicles operated by the employer, displacing their petrol/diesel
costs) or as a perk to employees and visitors to the workplace
driving electric vehicles.
As mentioned, there are specific cases where direct billing or cost
allocation in some form is appropriate and necessary.
In some cases, a new technology approach will be used to
meet these needs, but there are existing methods that can be
applied as well. This section focusses on using existing methods
around billing for the provision of car parking spaces, and on
administrative cost collection methods that do not require
handling the supply of electricity as a transaction.
Locations where parking is already being paid for, have a clear
pathway towards cost recovery of the electricity, by increasing
the price paid for parking. In Melbourne and Sydney CBDs, the
cost of occasional parking is routinely well above $10/hour.
Incrementing the cost to account for supply of electricity in
these cases will be an almost insignificant addition, and the
hardware required to support charging at rates around 7kW (i.e.,
adding up to 40km of range per hour parked) is not particularly
expensive. The justification for the car parking operator to install
the equipment is in the attraction of the EV driver to their car
park. Any collection of revenue from the supply of electricity is
incidental from the point of view of the car parking operator;
the point is to bring in the customer for the primary, high value
service.
Local and state governments are also offering public charging at
no cost to the driver in many cases at present, while retaining the
right to bill for usage in the future. The rationale behind
this is that the total cost of electricity used per annum by the
charging equipment is presently a tiny fraction of the equipment
installation cost (i.e., <1%), and their interests will be best served
by supporting uptake of electric vehicles more broadly, rather
than attempting cost recovery at this stage on the energy
consumed.
For example, in regional areas part of the rationale for local
government installing ‘free’ EV charging is to support their local
business owners. EV drivers stopping in a council-operated
parking space for an hour or so to top up their battery ‘for free’
will have lunch at a local eatery, and potentially shop at local
stores, rather than simply driving straight through to the next
town or destination.
In apartment complexes where it is practical, the easiest way to
provide for billing the right person for the energy used will be to
supply the EV charger at an allocated car parking space via the
same utility meter feeding the apartment to which the space is
allocated. Depending on the installation, this might be very easy
to do. For example, it is commonplace in some areas to have a
utility metering panel containing all the complexes
utility meters in the basement, with the downstream side of each
meter running to the apartment. What is proposed here, is that
in addition to the supply to the apartment, the metered supply
should also connect to an EV charger in the car parking space, by
way of suitable circuit protection.
This said, in some cases it may not be practical to wire the vehicle
charging equipment this way. Installing additional metering for
the EV chargers is certainly an option (which is covered in the
next section), but it is also possible to incorporate the costs into
body corporate fees.
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