Four Level 2 Charging Ports near Baltimore Inner Harbor
Baltimore’s Inner Harbor has many attractions that bring people downtown. There is the National Aquarium, Port Discovery Children’s Museum, Maryland Science Center, and many restaurants and other attractions. If you need a place to plug in while visiting, there are four new charging ports at the Harbor Park Garage at 55 Market Place. I stopped in to the garage to check out the two new ChargePoint CT-4000 series EV charging stations on the purple level near the garage office. I spoke with the manager and she was excited about the new stations. She said that they were originally scheduled to be installed in April but they waited until after July 1, 2014 in order to take advantage of the Maryland EVSE rebate program. The manager also said that they plan to add more charging stations on other levels of the garage in the future if there is enough demand. So far, only one car at a time has been seen charging but they haven’t advertised the availability of the stations yet. They plan to paint the parking spots green within the next few weeks.
Parking rates are $13.00 after 5:00 PM and weekends 6:00 AM to 10:00 PM. You may be able to find discount coupons online. The charging stations are free but you need a ChargePoint card.
There are two entrances to the garage, one on Market Place next to the McDonald’s and another on E. Lombard St. on the southeast corner of the building.
An official ground breaking ceremony was held for the Little Patuxent Square complex of apartments, offices and shops in downtown Columbia, Maryland. The nine-story, roughly $75 million building is designed to meet LEED Gold standards and will feature a green roof, space for Zip cars and its 740 space underground parking garage will have electric vehicle charging stations. The building is scheduled to open in the summer of 2016.
Thanks to @bro05 for bringing this planned charging site to my attention.
MOM’s Organic Market began installing EV charging stations at their stores beginning with their College Park and Timonium locations in 2011. Most of their eleven locations in Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania have two Level 2 charging stations that are free to use.
Scott Nash, the founder of MOM’s, is a great supporter of electric vehicles. He has owned a Nissan Leaf and currently drives a Tesla Model S that he reluctantly switched to only because the bigger battery of the Tesla fit his needs for longer range trips better than the Leaf. Employees of MOM’s are eligible for a 15% subsidy towards the purchase of an electric car (up to $5,000) after one year of full-time employment.
The MOM’s store in Frederick, Maryland is the first to get DC Quick Charging. There are actually two units installed and both have the CHAdeMO standard which currently is only used with optionally equipped Nissan Leafs and Mitsubishi iMiEV cars.
The 25kW DC Quick Chargers are from Fuji Electric. The 25kW models are less costly to install than the 50kW DC Quick Chargers seen at most CHAdeMO installations. Fuji claims that the lower powered Quick Chargers only take an additional 7 minutes when charging from 30% to 77% because the 50kW charger quickly ramps down to below 25kW anyway as the battery gets full.
The Fuji Electric chargers at MOM’s both have a credit card pad for accepting payment but it is not activated and the cost is free as it is at all of MOM’s charging stations. While these stations currently are limited to use only on CHAdeMO equipped cars, the unique aspect of this charging location is that it has a pair of DC Quick Chargers. The redundancy is an important feature of this site. In general, DC Quick Chargers seem to fail much more often than normal L2 charging stations. When you are taking a trip and counting on a Quick Charger to speed you along, it is nice to have a backup that won’t slow you down. It would take several hours if you had to resort to a Level 2 backup station.
Thanks MOM’s for this plug in site in Frederick and at your other store locations.
Featured Plug In Site – Ascend One Building, Columbia, MD
This DC Quick Charger has been operational since April 24, 2014. It was installed by Howard County Government and is located on the north side of the Ascend One Building at 8930 Stanford Blvd. in Columbia, Maryland. It is an AeroVironment CHAdeMO unit branded with a Nissan logo. The station is available to the public and there is currently no fee to use it.
This DC Quick Charger brought a Mitsubishi i from empty (10%) to 82% in just 20 minutes.
On Friday July 25, 2014 the County Council of Howard County, Maryland passed bill CB36-2014, which basically prohibits what EV drivers call ICEing at charging stations that have been designated with an official sign reserving the space exclusively for plug-in vehicles.
The bill was introduced by my county council representative, Jen Terrasa, and passed 4-0 with one council member recusing himself. When this bill goes into effect 61 days after enactment, it will mean that a vehicle that is not a plug-in that is parked at a charging station with an official parking control sign that conforms to applicable standards can be ticketed or towed in Howard County. The key part of this is that an official sign MUST be in place for the law to apply. As council member Terrasa pointed out during the vote, the decision is left up to the property owner whether they want to erect the signs to assign the parking spots as exclusive to plug-in vehicles and therefore make it enforceable.
Howard County wasted no time in putting up the required signs. The vote was on Friday afternoon and less than 24 hours later on Saturday, all the EV charging stations on County property had signs that read, “Electric Vehicles Charging Only” and many also had the parking spots painted green with “Electric Vehicle Charging Station” stenciled on the pavement. Perhaps the signs were previously planned and it was a coincidence or the county had an incredibly fast response in anticipation of the new law.
Passage of the bill is only the first stage. In order for the law to be effective, private property owners will have to be convinced to place official regulatory signs where ICEing is a problem. Without those signs, the law will be meaningless. I already have several sites in mind that could use signs to discourage ICEing.
Howard County is the second in the state of Maryland to pass such a law and the county has demonstrated leadership in initiatives to help the adoption of plug-in vehicles. Special thanks to District 3 Council Member Terrasa and her Special Assistant, Jamie Shopland, who worked diligently on this bill. I kept in contact with them throughout the drafting of the bill and when I saw language requiring that the vehicle be plugged in and actively charging, I pointed out the problems with that (as articulated by Plug In America, Chelsea Sexton and other EV advocates with California AB475) and the language was removed before the bill was introduced. I appreciate that responsiveness to our concerns.
There was a great turnout of EV drivers at the public comment session in front of the council. (here is a video of the testimony) And many people wrote letters of support to the council which demonstrates that there is a constituency that cares about issues involving plug-in electric vehicles.
A few weeks ago I reported that Columbia Whole Foods confirmed that they would have two charging stations at their new store that opens August 20, 2014. The two GE stations have been installed right where I suspected. They are not powered on yet and access to the parking lot is restricted with construction still taking place.
They had said via Twitter, “We’ll have 2 electric vehicle charging stations that can charge 2 vehicles at a time!” Indeed, there are two charging stations and each has one J-1772 connector. I was hoping that meant that each station would have two connectors but that’s not the case.
Two GE charging stations at Columbia Whole Foods
Whole Foods will be the first grocery store in Howard County, Maryland to provide car charging for customers. MOM’s Organic Market in Jessup does not have EV charging stations even though most other stores in their chain do. I understand that the reason has something to do with circumstances beyond their control at the Jessup location. I’m grateful for all the businesses that install charging stations for their customers. I’m likely to become a customer and stay a customer of those places. @Lanny
This is the first Tesla Supercharger site located in the state of Maryland. It opened in late January, 2014 as part of the initial coast-to-coast Supercharger route that I took with the @TeslaRoadTrip group between July 12 and 17, 2014. The video below is of the convoy of six Tesla Model S arriving at the Superchargers all at once.
There is a food court and restrooms located in the Mall and free WIFI service. Security patrols the parking lot and have been seen writing up cars that ICE the Superchargers. When the Hagerstown location first opened, the security people were not aware that the Superchargers were supposed to be accessible 24 hours a day and tried to tell Tesla drivers to leave after the Mall closed. That issue has since been resolved.
“ICEd.” It’s a term that stirs up EV drivers. To find a spot ICEd means that a vehicle with an Internal Combustion Engine, or ICE, is blocking access to a charging station.
The problem of gasoline powered vehicles parking in front of electric vehicle charging stations has been an issue at some locations in Howard County, Maryland where I live. To gain an understanding of the problem, one can view the reports on PlugShare, a popular app used to review EV charging sites, and see comments that note the driver couldn’t plug in because the station was ICEd. Many of these reports of being ICEd are at stations located on property owned by the Columbia Association.
I have written to Columbia Association (CA) officials several times expressing my gratitude for the charging stations but also suggesting that they take steps to ensure that the parking spots adjacent to them remain available for plug-in vehicles to use. I’ve suggested placing appropriate signage to discourage non plug in vehicles from parking there. They’ve responded that part of the reason for not erecting official no parking signs at the stations is the lack of legislation that allows for enforcement.
Ensuring access to charging stations is a relevant policy issue because many of those public stations were funded with tax payer money. It is my understanding that the charging stations on CA property were partly funded through a US Department of Energy grant. The cost of installing Level 2 public charging stations is generally between $6,000 and $10,000 each. That investment goes to waste each time they are not accessible for their intended use.
There is a history of attempts at legislation to address this problem in the Maryland General Assembly. In the 2012 session, Delegate Guy Guzzone, who represents my district, co-sponsored HB108. I wrote and offered input and support for that bill but HB108 didn’t pass.
In 2013, a similar bill HB1149 was introduced but it also failed to move through.
Earlier this year, Delegate Frank Turner, who also represents my district, co-sponsored HB1020 which died after an unfavorable report in the House Environmental Matters Committee.
Meanwhile, Montgomery County passed a law (bill 32-13) which is the first in the state of Maryland to deal with the issue of ICEing. I was the only person to attend the public comment session and testify in support of the Montgomery County bill. The bill ended up passing unanimously and the law became effective on June 11, 2014.
After the state bill failed for the third year in a row, I contacted my Howard County Council representative for District 3, Jen Terrasa, and explained the problem that plug in vehicle drivers face and asked her to propose a law to address this in Howard County. I provided links to resources including the Montgomery County bill, the text of Maryland bill HB1020 and a report from the Maryland Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Council.
I also cautioned against some factors that might sound good on the surface but actually have unintended consequences. One of those is requiring the vehicle to be plugged in or charging while parked at a charging station. Experienced EV advocates including Chelesa Sexton, from the movie “Who Killed the Electric Car,” fought against that provision in California AB 475. The argument against language requiring vehicles to remain connected is that no matter how or why your electric vehicle becomes unplugged, it can be towed, even if you can prove that you were connected to begin with.
Howard County Sheriff has a Nissan Leaf
Councilwoman Terrasa also heard from other Maryland EV drivers who have experienced being ICEd and who supported the introduction of legislation to deal with the issue.
On June 26, 2014, Councilwoman Terrasa filed CB36-2014 to reserve parking at charging stations that are designated with certain signage for plug in vehicles only.
The current text of the bill is located here. In my opinion, it covers all the bases without any of the well-meaning language that could cause difficulties in actual practice.
The bill uses the harmonized definition of a plug in vehicle used by the state which includes cars that have been converted from gasoline to electric. It will apply to private property but only if the property owner elects to erect an official sign. It does not require a plug in car to be charging or plugged in which could prevent plug swapping or leave an innocent driver susceptible to a fine or towing if someone unplugs their car without authorization. Time limits can be imposed to deal with squatters where necessary. And let’s face it, the real problem is not so much other plug in drivers, it is the gas cars parking at charging stations that needs to be solved.
According to the Maryland MVA, there are 252 plug in vehicles in Howard County as of December 2013. That ranks the county third in the state. There are over 35 public charging stations at 13 sites in the county.
Howard County Government is a huge supporter of EVs. They installed the first public charging stations in the county in 2011 at the Dorsey Building. They have a number of plug in vehicles in their fleet including a Nissan Leaf used by the Sheriff’s department. And recently they installed four more charging stations at the George Howard building where the County Council meets.
The George Howard Building where the Howard County Council meets has charging stations in the parking lot.
The Howard County Council will receive public comment on the bill on July 21, 2014, at 6:30 PM in the Banneker Room of the George Howard Building located at 3430 Courthouse Drive, Ellicott City, MD 21043.
I have already signed up to testify in support of the bill at the public hearing. If you are interested in joining me, you can sign-up in person the night of the hearing, or online by clicking here. You may also submit written testimony, comments or questions to Councilwoman Jen Terrasa or to the entire Council. See this contact page.
The Council is expected to vote on CB36 on July 25, 2014.
Electric Vehicle DC Fast Charger potential locations shown in green shaded areas. Click map to enlarge.
On April 24, 2014, the Maryland Attorney General held an event in Maple Lawn to announce $1 million in funding for a statewide Fast Charging Network for electric vehicles. (I posted video of that announcement here). At the time, particulars of the plan were still being worked on. Many of us had questions about the plan especially which charging connector standard (CHAdeMO or SAE Combo) will be used.
The Maryland Energy Administration has begun accepting applications for the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Grant Program (EVIP) and I’ve learned some new details including proposed locations, the timeline for completion and which charging connectors will be used.
The goal of the EVIP is to aid in the development of a DC Fast Charging Network in Maryland. A press release says the program is intended to promote energy independence in the state by facilitating greater investment in clean fuel automobiles. Widespread adoption of electric vehicles is also a critical tenet of the Maryland Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Council (EVIC), which seeks to have 60,000 electric vehicles in Maryland by 2020. EVIC recommended that the state incentivize EV ownership by ensuring adequate availability of EV charging infrastructure.
The funds for the grant came from a Consent Decree for alleged violations of the clean air act. Part of the Consent Decree is establishing charging infrastructure necessary to address “range anxiety.” Range anxiety describes a condition in which the consumer is hesitant to buy an EV due to concerns about being stranded without access to a charging station or being unable to complete a trip given the constraints of the vehicle. This EV infrastructure grant program is designed to help alleviate this concern.
The program is expected to fund 20-40 stations. Proposed locations include Western and Southern Maryland, as well as the Eastern Shore and the Baltimore-Annapolis-Washington DC metropolitan areas. EVIP is a competitive grant requiring at least 50% cost sharing. Once installed, there will be a fee to use the DC Fast charging stations.
In order to facilitate charging of all vehicles, the DC Fast Charging stations installed through this grant must be configured with both CHAdeMO and SAE Combo charging standards at each location (either as a dual connector station or as two separate stations).
Proposed stations must be located either within 1⁄2 mile of Federal or State highway exits, or within Metropolitan areas. Distances between charging stations should be less than 30 miles in Western Maryland, 40 miles in Central Maryland, 40 to 60 miles in the Eastern Shore and Southern Maryland.
The map above indicates the general areas, by zip code, where stations would be desirable but is only used for guidance. Locations in the map seem to include the following: Ocean City, Cambridge, Princess Anne, Aberdeen and the area near the Delaware border off I-95, Cumberland, Deep Creek Lake, Brunswick, Thurmont, Hagerstown, Northwest Baltimore and the North Laurel area in Howard County.
A requirement of the grant applicant is that chargers apply the Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) communication standard that allows charging stations from different vendors to communicate. This will allow drivers to charge at stations outside of their network or charge without needing membership in any charging network.
The winning applicant will be announced in November, 2014 and the installation of all stations should be completed by October 1, 2016.
In May 2014, the Maryland Electric Vehicles and Recharging Equipment-Rebates and Tax Credits bill (HB 1345/SB 908) was signed into law to provide incentives to expand the purchase of electric vehicles and recharging stations.
Through the program established by the bill, residents, governments and businesses can acquire a state rebate for purchasing and installing an electric vehicle charging station, also known as Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE).
In order to receive a rebate, eligible participants must apply with the Maryland Energy Administration (MEA) which will issue rebates on a first-come, first-served basis. The EVSE Rebate Program is for systems purchased and installed on or after July 1, 2014, but before June 30, 2017.
I stopped in to the garage to check out the two new ChargePoint CT-4000 series EV charging stations on the purple level near the garage office. I spoke with the manager and she was excited about the new stations. She said that they were originally scheduled to be installed in April but they waited until after July 1, 2014 in order to take advantage of the Maryland EVSE rebate program. The manager also said that they plan to add more charging stations on other levels of the garage in the future if there is enough demand. So far, only one car at a time has been seen charging but they haven’t advertised the availability of the stations yet. They plan to paint the parking spots green within the next few weeks.
In May 2014, the Maryland Electric Vehicles and Recharging Equipment-Rebates and Tax Credits bill (HB 1345/SB 908) was