Electrify America has signed leases for 71 of its 162 highway and community DC charging locations planned by next year in California and made progress on the details of its GreenCity initiative in the Sacramento area, according to a new update filed with the California Air Resources Board.
The plans call for at least 50 new highway corridor charging locations statewide and another 110 or so community charging locations in 6 of the largest metropolitan areas. The sites are intended to be completed or under development by June, 2019.
A further 1,500 slower 240V AC charging spots are planned in the 6 metro areas with about 75 percent located at workplaces and the remainder at multi-unit residential complexes. Electrify America is directly planning and operating the 160 or so DC charging sites but has contracted with the charging site operators SemaConnect, EV Connect, and Greenlots to help develop and operate the AC charging sites.
The company acknowledged that it is running behind schedule.
It said some delays were due to confusion among permit granting officials regarding the requirements of what it said were recently announced state accessibility guidance but that it is working with the governor’s staff and local officials to clarify the requirements and expedite permit approvals.
The plans call for about 350 workplace and residential AC charging sites but Electrify America acknowledged that so far it’s partners have only signed 28 site agreements although they have identified 527 qualified leads. It said “both the timeline to convert leads and the conversion rate did not meet projections during the quarter”.
“Electrify America took a series of mitigation actions to expedite the site acquisition process, and the three vendors leveraged extra sales resources, including new employees, to increase the pace. Electrify America is managing this program closely in an effort to get the program back on schedule”, the report said.
Green City Progress
One aspect of Electrify America’s work that is unique to California is the $44 million Green City initiative which calls for concentrated transformative investments in a single metro area to help demonstrate the potential of switching to electric vehicles.
In its first of four 2.5 year cycles of investment, Sacramento was chosen as the first such Green City. The plans call for several major demonstration projects: car share and ride-hailing services, fleet services including shuttle and bus services, and higher density charging infrastructure.
In June, Electrify America finalized agreements with two organizations to provide car sharing services. GIG Car Share will operate a so-called “free float” car share service where cars can be borrowed and left within a 13 square mile urban core area of Sacramento utilizing 260 EVs. The other program, called Envoy, will be a round-trip car share service with 71 locations containing two or more parking stalls each with 240V AC charging for a total of 152 EVs.
According to an Electrify America presentation at a July 17 meeting of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), the GIG service will be using 2019 Chevrolet Bolt EVs while Envoy will use 2018 Volkswagen e-Golfs. The GIG and Envoy services are expected to launch later this year.
Electrify America has also entered into preliminary agreements with Sacramento Regional Transit (SacRT) to operate an on-demand electric microbus shuttle service in the low-income Franklin Boulevard area of Sacramento and an expanded bus route between UC Davis and Sacramento. The UC Davis line will be operated together with the Yolo County Transportation District starting in 12 to 18 months using 12 new electric buses that are expected to provide about 400,000 rides in the first year of operation.
The Q2 reports says Electrify America secured 8 leases for DC charging locations in Sacramento. The July SMUD presentation says 11 locations have been secured within the SMUD territory which is a subset of the larger Sacramento metropolitan area receiving community charging from Electrify America. Of the 11 SMUD territory sites, 9 were said to be under design and 2 were in the permit filing stage.
Categories: Charging
Electric Revs 
At least EA is being smart about their public charging deployments. L2 deployment at workplaces and multi-unit residences will definitly support wider adoption of EVs.
The one item I hope they start to mix in is the use of medium power DCFC (20-25 kW charging power) in addition to L2 deployments and scattering among various places where folks have short to medium stops, such as the grocery, restaurants, the gym, strip malls, and the like. These deployments adds a level of flexibility and convenience that will augment the baseline L2 charging most EV owners do now. The flexibility will be to gain more significant charges on a more consistent basis than L2 can offer. Typically medium power DCFC facilitates charges up to 90% state of charge at full power without taper, can charge at maximum power for all DCFC port equipped vehicles, and can deliver a significant charge in a relatively short amount of time (20-40 minutes). This power level usually can be deployed in the same spots where public L2 chargers are currently located without a significant upgrade in the electrical infrastructure to support it. BTW this same flexibility extends into places where L2 is appropriate such as residences and workplaces. DCFC facilitates getting bigger charges in shorter timeframes in the instances where an EV owner doesn’t have multiple hours to charge.
In addition having the convenience to charge where EV owners are likely to visit adds significant improvement to the public charging infrastructure. Range anxiety is driven by the fact that there are not a lot of places to stop and get a significant charge during the course of nornal business. This takes EV owners out their way, spending extra time charging instead of charging while doing normal activities.
I’ve suggested this type of deployment to EA. Hopefully they will start to incorporate it into their next cycle.
ga2500ev
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I think you may be right that a 25 kW DC charger could be a useful addition to a cluster of L2 at workplaces or residential cluster. Such a charger needs about the same power as 3 L2 AC chargers and they aren’t that much more expensive. There are also models that run off of single phase 240V which is the same power connection used by L2 AC in North America.
One issue is that these DC units typically have just one cable and plug for CCS and not CHAdeMO. But EA is already barely supporting CHAdeMO anyway….
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Jeff, there is a dual plug CCS/CHAdeMO out on Amazon. Search for Delta EV Wallbox DC Fast Charger 25kW. Clocks in at $12,000 on Amazon. There are other sites that carry it for $1500 to $2000 less depending on input voltage configuration.
I just think it’ll be better when we have a 20-25 kW DCFC and a pair of L2s in more places where there are currently 6-8 L2s. It’s a much more effective mix.
ga2500ev
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Thanks for the info.
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