[ausev] charging stations

[Peace]

I think it's a great idea to petition the city for charging stations.  In addition to city-installed outlets, I suggest we also petition for plug-in outlet incentives so that employers won't have to foot the bill of providing outlets for employees.  I recently went through a challenging negotiation process with my employer and finally got an outlet, though it's a half-arsed solution.

As for the charging station outlets, it may be wise to provide both 120v and 240v plugs.  That's because alot of 2-wheeled vehicles (motorcycles, scooters, bicycles) and trikes only need 120v. Pulling 120v from a 240v single phase split AC supply is trivial, balancing issues aside.  I imagine the a well designed meter would need a current limiter, but not a breaker in the traditional sense.  The current limiter would allow a car to pull only up to the meter's max capacity, even if the vehicle tries to pull more.  That would prevent the circuit breaker from popping and rendering the outlet useless until someone manually resets it, likely behind lock & key.



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Tesla (and I presume other OEMs) have the ability to program their charger
to only pull the amount of current that the power source can provide.  So if
you have a 240V/30A socket, you program that into the car and it draws the
appropriate amount as not to blow the breaker.   Other's like the Volt will
only pull 3.3kW max from a 240V socket anyway so it doesn't matter what
current rating the socket has, as even the smallest one (30A) will suffice.
So rather than try to add anything special high current sockets to try to
cover everything, just install the standard 30A outlet which most are
familiar with and would be the cheapest.
Marc Kohler 

-----Original Message-----
From: ausev-bounces at austinev.org [mailto:ausev-bounces at austinev.org] On
Behalf Of gary
Sent: Monday, July 06, 2009 7:17 AM
To: AustinEV News Announcements and General Discussion; The Alamo City
Electric Auto Association's Discussion List
Subject: [ausev] charging stations

We'd like to get EV charging stations installed around town and I'd like 
to get more information on types.

110V is the easiest and cheapest but not most practical.

220V at 30A or 50A is much more practical for conversions but what about 
production cars in the future?

The Tesla charging station in LA is a special plug at 70A - anyone know 
details?

What will other Tesla, BYD, Nissan, Prius, etc be using?

-- 
Gary Krysztopik
www.ZWheelz.com
www.aceaa.org
San Antonio, TX

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