PlugInSites is tracking Electric Vehicle legislation in MD, VA and certain EV related bills in other states.
Read More …Broken Chargers, Broken Promises
How long should a public EV charging station be down? Should broken chargers be fixed within 24 hours? 48 hours? A week? What if the local power company owns the charging station, what then would be your expectation?
Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE) convinced the Maryland Public Service Commission to allow them to enter the electric vehicle charging market. One of the assurances they made was that they could provide reliable service. They were quoted about EV charging reliability in the Baltimore Sun…
“BGE is being held to the same reliability standards as our electric distribution system, so they must be operational at all times. … Customers will have the sense of ease that they can go to a BGE charger and that it will be working and operational.”
Baltimore Sun/Carroll County Times June 14, 2019
3 Weeks in September
In early September 2021, an EV driver posted a Tweet that both fast chargers at Kenhill Center in Bowie, MD were faulted and asked Greenlots and BGE how long it would take to get them repaired.
I added to the thread that both fast chargers in Essex, MD were also reporting as inoperable due to a fault condition. BGE responded via Twitter that they were aware of the outages at both locations. They explained that all four units appeared to be experiencing an internal capacitor issue. They said they were working with the chargers’ manufacturer, Tritium, to replace the failed components.
Read More …Pete Buttigieg and Jennifer Granholm Make Announcement from Maryland EV Charging Station
DOE and DOT Joint Press Conference
U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg came to Maryland to announce that they have signed a memorandum of understanding to create a Joint Office of Energy and Transportation to support deployment of a national electric vehicle charging network. The program is budgeted to spend $7.5 billion to focus on placing EV charging stations in rural, disadvantaged, and hard-to-reach locations.
Arrived in Electric Mustang Mach-E
Secretary Buttigieg and Secretary Granholm traveled to RS Automotive in Takoma Park to make the announcement. They arrived in an electric Ford Mustang Mach-E with Buttigieg behind the wheel. Secretary Granholm quipped that the Transportation Secretary is an excellent driver and that the ride over was smooth and quiet because they were in an all-electric car which is part of the Federal fleet.
Gas Station Converted to Charge Electric Vehicles
RS Automotive converted their old gas station to an electric vehicle charging station in 2019. The four DC fast chargers dispensed a combined average of about 60 kWh per day in the first half of 2021 according to data supplied by the Maryland Energy Administration. The EV chargers have reportedly displaced the equivalent of 326 gallons of gasoline during the 6-month period, which is an average of 1.8 gallons of gasoline per day.
Watch the 12/14/2021 DOE & DOT Joint Press Conference in its entirety below.
Dorsey’s Search Meeting Room – Columbia Association
A new dual-port Level 2 charging station is now open at Dorsey’s Search Meeting Room and Pool in Columbia, Maryland.
The EVSE was recently installed by the Columbia Association.
This is the eighth site to have EV charging stations installed by the Columbia Association. The other locations are at Owen Brown Community Center, Columbia Gym, Supreme Sports Club, Athletic Club (2), Long Reach Tennis Club (2), The Other Barn in Oakland Mills and The Hawthorn Center in Hickory Ridge.
Dorsey’s Search
The charging station operates on the ChargePoint network. You can use a ChargePoint RFID card or their app to activate a charging session. The usage fee is $0.20 per kWh, the same as at the other Columbia Association EV charging locations.
Read More …Frederick County Passes Very Limited “Anti-ICEing” Ordinance
The Frederick County Council voted 5-2 to approve legislation to prohibit non-electric vehicles from parking in reserved charging spaces on County roads and County owned property.
Not Applicable on Private Property
The ordinance will not apply at the Tesla Superchargers at FSK Mall nor will it apply at the Electrify America chargers at Walmart. The ordinance will only be enforceable at publicly available charging spaces on County owned property. Currently, there are no electric vehicle charging stations that are open to the public on Frederick County owned property.
Council Discussion
The bill had previously been amended to remove the 8,500 lb. weight limit in the definition of a plug-in electric vehicle and to change the requirement that plug-in vehicles must be connected to language that says, “A person may only stop, stand, or park a plug-in vehicle in a plug-in vehicle parking space for the purpose of charging the plug-in vehicle.”
Council Vice President Michael Blue expressed that he did not think the bill was necessary. He noted that at the two public hearings on the bill all of the people who commented were EV drivers and none of them supported the legislation. He explained that he had voted in favor of the amendments because, “I would like the bill to be as good or better than it was, and I think the amendments did help that.”
Rick Harcum, the County’s Chief Administrative Officer said, that the Administration is generally in support of the proposal because it sets the stage for how parking spaces for electric vehicles should be managed on County property in the future.
Harcum said that as of now, there are only five charging stations on County property and that they are “designated by signage for parking of County vehicles, so they are not considered public parking spaces.” He added that the County can currently manage those non-public parking spaces by having DPW put up signs.
Read More …Questions About Frederick County “Anti-ICEing” Legislation
Frederick County Maryland is considering legislation that purports to restrict parking at electric vehicle charging stations. Sounds great, doesn’t it?
But what will this “anti-ICEing” ordinance actually do for EV drivers if it passes? Let’s examine the details.
Will the “Anti-ICEing” ordinance apply at the Frederick, MD Tesla Superchargers?
No.
The ordinance requires official signs that conform to the “Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices”. Tesla uses signs branded with their logo that don’t meet the MUTCD standards. Also, six of the ten stalls have “General Parking” signs that allow anyone, even ICE drivers, to park for up to 30 minutes in the charging spaces.
Will it apply at the Electrify America Chargers at Walmart in Frederick?
No.
The EA chargers at Walmart have official MUTCD signs but they are on private property. The Frederick County ordinance will not apply on private property.
New Castle County, Delaware Passes EV-Capable Ordinance
For All New Residential Construction
The New Castle County Council in Delaware passed an EV-Capable ordinance for new residential construction to ensure that homes will have the capability to have Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment installed quickly and affordably in the future. Ordinance 21-116, sponsored by Councilperson Dee Durham, will require a junction box or receptacle within five feet of the parking space, conduit from the receptacle to the electrical panel and sufficient space in the panel to install a breaker for an EVSE.
For new multi-unit dwellings, the ordinance requires 10% (amended from the proposed 50%) of parking spots to be EV-capable. There must be a minimum of two EV-capable spots with one of them required to be designated as handicapped accessible. If approved by the County Executive, the ordinance will apply to all new construction permit applications beginning on July 1, 2022.
Councilperson Durham said that she and her staff talked to people all around the country in preparation for this bill. She originally wanted the ordinance to require “EV-Ready” which would include full wiring and circuit breakers but learned that the County didn’t have the regulatory authority over the electrical code. Those changes will have to be made at the state level since the state oversees the electric code.
Read More …Comments to Maryland PSC on Reliability of Public Charging
The Maryland Public Service Commission held a hearing today on the utilities’ EV Pilot Mid-Course Review in Case No. 9478.
I spoke to the Commissioners via video from a broken charger to stress the need for better reliability for the utilities that are using ratepayer funds to provide public EV charging stations. [Link to YouTube Video]
Here’s a transcript of those remarks.
Hi, I’m Lanny Hartmann. I want to comment today about the reliability of public charging from an EV driver’s point of view.
I’m at Howard County Community College, this is near my home. The stations behind me opened in January. And if you look behind me, there’s two DC fast chargers. This one right here has a sign, it says “Out of Order.” This sign, I don’t know who put it up but it’s been there since at least September 12. So this station has been inoperable for at least a month.
There’s a station next to it, sometimes both of the stations are down. Today that one is lit. I was here earlier and used the Greenlots card and passed it over the RFID reader and it didn’t recognize it. Luckily I have the Greenlots app which I was able to start a session. But once I started the session, it was only giving me 20 kW. These are 50 kW stations, so I was only getting 40% of the capacity. But I was paying $.34 a kilowatt hour for DC fast charging. The people who have used this have known that this has always been slow. When you come here, you hope this one is working because that one is going to be slow.
You’re talking about fast charges to serve apartments and MUDs. Right across the street, on the other side of the road, there are apartments and condos. Probably at least 100 within a mile of here. Imagine if you depended on these for your daily fill-up and they are down for a month. That’s an issue.
And these are not the only ones.
There’s a station that had a ribbon-cutting with the Governor up in Essex, Maryland. That was in April. About six weeks ago, they both went down at the same time. That’s all there is, there’s two DC fast chargers there. They were both down for at least three weeks. Same thing happened about the same time at Kenhill Center in Bowie. Both of those fast chargers went down at the same time and they were down for weeks. Finally, after three weeks, one of them [in Essex] got fixed. The other one is still down.
95% uptime. What would you call that one if it’s only working at 40% capacity? These things need to work.
BGE is asking for $1 million to go from the supposed 95% uptime to 98% guaranteed uptime. I commented before the Commission back in 2018, when you were considering this pilot, and Mr. Chairman, you directed a question to me if I supported it as an EV driver, as a member of the public, as a ratepayer. I remember my comment was, that I expected BGE would have a better way to keep these reliable. Because at the time, I was also concerned about reliability and at that time, I told about some issues with the reliability that we were having before. I based my answer on the supposition that BGE would keep these up like I’m used to BGE keeping the power on and the reliability of my home electric service.
As a ratepayer and as an EV driver, I cannot support $1 million for, as what Commissioner Herman said, to go from [95%] to 98% guaranteed uptime for 2 1/2 years. That almost seems like a ransom. Like, “You’ve got these nice charging stations, now if you want them to work, you’ve got to give me a million dollars.”
I’m also concerned about using hubs of fast chargers as a substitute for Level 2 at the Multi-Unit Dwellings themselves. I think that ultimately, we need to learn how we can get power to people’s parking spaces where they park overnight.
And with that Mr. Chairman, that’s the end of my comments. Thank you very much.
See also: Advocating for EV Charger Reliability at the Maryland PSC
Flawed Frederick County Anti-ICEing Bill – Public Comment
Dear Frederick County Council Members,
As an electric vehicle driver, I wish to oppose the Electric Vehicles bill no. 21-09.
This legislation, while well-meaning, will likely harm more than it will help.
The preamble of 21-09 states that it would “prohibit parking of a vehicle that is not a plug-in vehicle in a public parking space reserved for plug-in vehicles.” This would be similar to the ordinances in Montgomery, Howard, and Baltimore Counties to prohibit only gasoline vehicles from EV charging spaces.
But the actual language in the Frederick County bill says plug-in vehicle drivers would also be in violation “if the vehicle is not connected to the charging equipment.”
This is a reasonable idea in theory. But how do you know for certain the original intention of the EV driver?
I have had someone unplug my car without permission on multiple occasions. Sometimes another EV driver will park next to me and take the charging connector from my car and plug it into their car. One time, the car’s dashcam recorded someone who, for no apparent reason, walked up to the car, unplugged it and put the connector back in the charging station. Both of these scenarios would leave EV drivers vulnerable to a violation through no fault of their own if you adopt this bill.
See the attached photo taken at the EV charging station at Winchester Hall for the County’s fleet vehicle. There are notices on the charging equipment to warn people, “You are on camera. This area is under surveillance.” Apparently, there are already concerns about people tampering with EV charging on County property.
EV drivers simply cannot rely on the good behavior of every person who passes by our vehicle while it is unattended in order to avoid a ticket.
This ordinance will discourage people from using public charging if it goes into effect. Montgomery, Howard and Baltimore County Councils decided to focus only on prohibiting gas cars as a first step while reserving their option to amend the ordinance if complaints arise about EV drivers abusing the charging spaces.
The Council should ask if existing parking ordinances such as § 1-15-20 can be employed to enforce parking rules on County property rather than creating a new section of Code for an evolving technology like electric vehicle charging.
Should the Frederick County Council add § 1-15-31 to the Frederick County Code regarding Electric Vehicles? The answer quite simply is, no.
There are more effective ways to support EV adoption than this difficult to enforce bill. I’d be happy to work with you on solutions for those bigger issues.
I respectfully ask the council to vote against adoption of bill 21-09.
Sincerely,
Lanny Hartmann
UPDATE:
At the public hearing that was held on Oct. 12, 2021, the sponsor of this bill said he understood the concerns about the “must be connected” language and that he plans to make adjustments to the bill in response. However, the bill remains unnecessary because existing parking laws can be applied to protect EV charging stations on public property and private property managers can apply existing trespass-to laws.
Fast Charger Utilization Study – Columbia / Jessup
How much usage do electric vehicle fast chargers get? How about the relative utilization between similar fast charger sites in the same geographical area? Below are the results of a Fast Charger Utilization Study conducted over the summer to get a rough idea of which fast chargers EV drivers are actually using in a particular area along the I-95 corridor between Washington, DC and Baltimore.
For the 90-day period between July 1 and September 30, 2021, I tracked the electricity usage at four DC fast charging sites in the area of Columbia and Jessup, Maryland. All four charging stations are along MD Rt. 175 and are accessible from Exit 41 of Interstate 95.
Electrify America, Columbia
The Electrify America charging site at the Walmart in Columbia, MD opened on November 16, 2019. It has ten CCS dispensers, two have a maximum output of 350 kW and the rest are 150 kW. One dispenser has a 50 kW CHAdeMO connector paired with a 150 kW CCS. The difference between the meter readings at the beginning and the end of the 90 day period was 35,400 kWh. The daily average for the entire site was 393 kWh. This does not necessarily mean that all that went into vehicles. Some of it is used to power and cool the electronics and of course to keep that green glow going. Electrify America, Columbia is 2.7 miles and approximately 6 minutes from I-95.
Read More …