Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: Hello, and welcome to the Consulting Specifying Engineer podcast.
I'm your host, Amara Rosgas, and today we're talking to Brandon Reynolds at Peter Basso Associates.
Today we're talking about electric vehicle charging stations. And according to first quarter vehicle registration records, new electric vehicle sales increased from 3.2% in 2021 and 5.8% in 2022 to 7% this year, 2023.
And whether you're new to the world of EVs or an early adopter, there's a great deal of information that can help determine what your needs might be.
So I'd like to introduce our guest, Brandon Reynolds, an associate with Peter Basso Associates, based out of Michigan. Brandon's project experience includes electrical system design for new construction and renovations, primarily higher education facilities.
And as electric vehicles began to evolve and charging stations became necessary design components on projects, Brandon led the research on how EV charging works, who manufactures them, what types of connectors different vehicles use, and the requirements of NFPA 70 or the National Electrical Code. His research also includes how EV charging stations are specified, installed, and connected to the building distribution system. So welcome, Brandon. It's great to chat with you today.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: I'm happy to be here.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: Excellent. So, Brandon, this is a huge topic and one that electrical engineers are facing or will be soon. So I have a few questions for you.
Can you give us a brief introduction to what options are available for electric vehicle charging stations? Kind of take it from the very beginning?
[00:01:58] Speaker A: Definitely.
You know, EV charging has been around for a number of years now, especially with the early adopters. And during that time, the charging types have settled into two general categories, AC charging and DC charging. Now, hearing that, you might be tempted to say that EV charging is like tnt. It's dynamite.
All jokes aside, AC charging is really divvied up into level one or level two charging.
And this is something that you've heard probably in passing by, or if you're looking at charging for your own facilities.
DC charging is also known as fast chargers, or they are the superchargers that you see in local parking lots or along super corridors.
Sometimes these are marketed as level three or level four, but generally if we call them DC fast chargers, most people will understand what you mean.
[00:02:58] Speaker B: Got it. Okay, that's a really good overview. So what are the differences between these categories, including those different levels in category.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: One, you know, all electric vehicles utilize DC power and buildings utilize AC power. So really, the key difference here is where the conversion from AC to DC takes place.
AC chargers bring AC power from the building directly to the vehicle.
Then the EVs onboard charger converts it from AC to DC and charges the battery.
This type of charging is broken up between level one and level two. Level one charging is more of a residential solution, as you just plug it into a standard outlet and you just let it charge. Granted, it takes many hours or even days to fully charge an ev, so it's, it's not a practical solution, but it is a good backup in case you can't find a level 2 charger.
Level 2 charging is by far the most common charging type that you'll come across. I think there's like 220,000 installations of level 2 charging in America, so it's quite common.
These utilize 208 volts or 240 volts single phase power and can range anywhere from 16amps to 80amps.
From a price point perspective, if you wanted to purchase a level 2 charger, they can range anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.
Now this doesn't include any installation costs, so generally if you're looking to have, you know, an electrician install it, it's going to be more than a few thousand. But these are just some general price points.
In terms of DC chargers, they convert 480 volt AC power to DC power and then charge the EVs battery directly.
Now, these systems are rated in kilowatts rather than amps, but they can range anywhere from, you know, 30 kilowatts up to 360 kilowatts. Now to the average person, this may not really mean a lot to you, and that's okay.
To put it into perspective, a house can use anywhere from 3kW to 10kW, depending on what you have in your house.
A typical 20,000 square foot office building can use about 300 kilowatts.
So in reality, a fast charger, the fastest fast charger that's currently available, can be about the size of a typical office building.
So just kind of puts things into perspective as to if you're looking to add fast chargers, it's going to require a lot of power and going to require some upgrades more than likely.
Most buildings don't really have this kind of capacity to add fast chargers easily. And so you're going to have some more significant upgrades as such. These the total cost of installing a single fast charger can easily exceed $100,000.
Then depending on what kind of options you, you get, even the fast charger itself, just buying it can exceed $100,000.
It's a very, very changing market. New manufacturers are coming into the, into the gambit.
They're coming out with newer and better chargers, and some are coming out with worse chargers. So as time goes on, hopefully we'll see some of these things settle out. But I think a general rule of rule of thumb is that AC chargers are going to be a little more tried and true than some of your DC chargers.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: So it sounds like these options are all over the board, Brandon. And between power requirements and the end results, are they all compatible with all electric vehicles?
[00:07:02] Speaker A: Well, you know, that answer changes all the time.
And in the time that it's taken me to prepare for this conversation, it's changed many times since then. So let's get into it a little bit. We'll address it for both types of charging.
For level 2 charging, there are currently only two standard ports in America. There's Tesla and everybody else.
Tesla has their own proprietary charging port and everybody else uses a standard called SAA J 1772. Now, that's a lot of letters and numbers.
You don't need to worry about that. Just know that the vast majority of the American vehicle market uses the same type of plug.
The good news is that Tesla vehicles come with an adapter that allow them to be compatible with those types of chargers. So that means if you install a standard level 2 charger with America's current standard, then it is compatible with all current EVs on the market.
However, this is the part that changed. Recently, many EV manufacturers have announced partnerships with Tesla to allow their vehicles to be compatible with their chargers.
In addition, sae, which is the company that created the original standard, they're looking to adopt Tesla's plug as the quote, unquote, North American charging standard.
It's confusing. We don't know what it means. This is all in its infancy. Manufacturers haven't talked about how this is going to happen.
EV charger manufacturers haven't explained how it's going to happen.
And right now, the future just kind of looks a little fuzzy.
It might turn out to just be an adapter that allows American vehicles to utilize Tesla chargers.
Or it might mean that all EVs moving forward will utilize Tesla's plug. Or maybe a mixture of both.
Unfortunately, we don't really know.
And actually that's really a common theme in the EV charging world. Things change all the time.
I have had put together presentations for multiple clients, and every single time I've put it together, I've had to change something because one part of the EV charging market has Changed just, you know, in 2017, the. The fastest fast charger available was 100 kilowatts.
Today you can get chargers that are 360 kilowatts, and there's talks of ones that are going even higher. So it. It's changing at a rapid pace.
Now moving on to fast charging.
These utilize three different standard connectors.
There's Tesla, American vehicles, and older Japanese vehicles.
Tesla should come as no surprise to anybody, but American vehicles currently use a standard called CCS1. Again, lots of letters and numbers, but all that matters is that all of the American vehicles on the market other than Tesla utilize this standard.
The newer Japanese vehicles also use the same standard.
Really, the only kind of complication comes in is when we talk about the older vehicles. Like your Nissan leafs, they used an older standard called Chademo. This standard's being phased out, but you have to understand that there are some vehicles on the road that still utilize it.
Similar to our conversation on level 2, this current standard that American vehicles use might transition to Tesla's plug. But even so, there are adapters that can be purchased that go from Tesla vehicles and allow them to use CCS one DC fast chargers.
[00:11:09] Speaker B: So, Brandon, it sounds like we're kind of living in the wild west here.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: You could definitely say that.
[00:11:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. All right, so now that we kind of have an idea of what's available, how does a business owner or a building owner determine what type of charging they want? How many, where to put it? How do you figure all that out with them?
[00:11:29] Speaker A: Oh, man, that is a great question. And we've had this conversation with many, many building owners and business owners, and honestly, there's no one right solution. And it's going to be tailored to what your needs are and what your desires are and what you can afford.
Honestly, you know, this sounds like a great topic for another EV Charger podcast.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: I do think you are correct. So, yes, we will definitely get together again. But I do have one more question for you.
I'm guessing that you get to visit some of these client projects and sites.
What's the one thing that you cannot travel without? What's the one thing you cannot live without?
[00:12:15] Speaker A: Well, you know, I would love to say an electric vehicle, but unfortunately, I haven't been financially blessed enough to own one yet. But I love music, so whenever I travel to different job sites, you know, when I travel up to. To Marquette doing work there, or even, even somewhere local like, like Dearborn or Ann Arbor, I like to have a musical instrument on me, whether it's something small, like a kalimba or an acoustic guitar or a banjo, even just something to kind of get get the musical juices flowing and just relax a bit.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: Got it. Awesome. Well, that was Brian Reynolds from Peter Basso Associates talking about EV charging stations and his love of music.
[00:13:04] Speaker A: Hey, I would hope that you would see that from my AC DC joke. But you know what?
Now you know.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: Exactly. Exactly. Thank you. And for more information on codes and standards or other electrical engineering topics related to EV charging stations, visit consulting specifying engineerscmag.com and like Brandon just said, this is the first of a couple of conversations with Brandon and his colleagues. So please check back for the next episode that will explore this topic in a lot more depth.
Thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time. Bye. Bye.
