PlugInSite Recharge 5798 – Westminster, MD

September 20, 2020

Status:
Fast Charger is Back Online.

Update 2:10 PM Dec. 8, 2020: Greenlots reports that the issue with the Fast Charger has been resolved. It had been offline for about two weeks.

Description:

The sole BGE – Carroll County Commissioners DC Fast Charger in Westminster, MD has had multiple periods were it was offline and inoperable for days or weeks. This EV charger is on the Greenlots network as Station ID: 43336. Details tracked below.

Actions to Get This “Recharged”

re·charge  1. to bring back to a former condition or vigor  2. to bring back to life, practice, or activity

Greenlots app screenshot 12/8/2020 2:03 PM

December 8, 2020, 2:10 PM:
The DCFC Station ID 43336 is showing as online and available on the Greenlots app.

Greenlots app screenshot 12/7/2020 11:32 AM

December 7, 2020:
This DCFC is still showing as offline on the Greenlots app as of 11:30 AM

December 1, 2020:
Carroll County Board of Commissioners President Stephen Wantz responded to email. Commissioner Wantz was thankful for the report and said he had no idea that there were problems until receiving the email. He said he had contacted Carroll County’s BGE Governmental Affairs representative and BGE have assured him they “will be addressing this as rapidly as possible.”

November 30, 2020:
Received email response from Carroll County Commissioner Dennis Frazier.

November 30, 2020:
This DCFC is showing as offline again on the Greenlots app as of 9:30 PM

November 30, 2020:
Received response from BGE to Nov. 27 email.

Greenlots app screenshot 11/30/2020 12:50 PM

November 30, 2020, 12:50 PM:
The DCFC Station ID 43336 is showing as online on the Greenlots app as of 12:50 PM.

November 30, 2020:
Wrote to Carroll County Commissioners Stephen Wantz and Dennis Frazier to enlist their help to resolve the maintenance, reliability and repair issues at this charger.

Greenlots app screenshot 11/30/2020 12:05 AM

November 30, 2020:
This DCFC is still showing as offline on the Greenlots app as of 12:05 AM

November 28, 2020:
This DCFC is still showing as offline on the Greenlots app as of 10:45 PM

November 27, 2020:
Emailed BGE and cc’d the Maryland Public Service Commission about the present issue at this charger.

3:29 PM · Nov 25, 2020 · Twitter

November 25, 2020:
As requested, attempted to reply to @myBGE via Direct Message (DM) but apparently the BGE Twitter account hasn’t enabled settings to receive Direct Messages (DMs) from customers.

November 25, 2020:
EV driver couldn’t charge at the BGE – Carroll County Commissioners DC Fast Charger in Westminster, according to a Tweet. Ticket was reportedly opened on that site two days earlier, Nov. 23rd

October 15, 2020:
Charged successfully on the CHAdeMO connector. Greenlots customer support never contacted me when this charger was fixed as I had requested and they had agreed to do.

RFID card authorization attempt Sept. 20, 2020

September 20, 2020:
The Fast Charger is still unable to communicate with the network and therefore unable to initiate a charge. This station has apparently been down for about 10 days now. I asked Greenlots to email me when this unit is operational again and they agreed to do that and took my email address.

September 15, 2020:
Called the Maryland Public Service Commission to discuss the reliability issue at this charger and to ask about operational reliability standards for EV charging. Learned that there are not really any reliability standards that the utilities are being held to for EV chargers at this point.

September 13, 2020:
Fast Charger is not operational. I called Greenlots support and they said that a dispatch had been sent for service on this unit three days ago which would have been September 10th. I had a bad experience when I was unable to charge at the BGE Fast Charger in Ellicott City, MD in February. I brought the reliability and response concerns to the attention of the Maryland Public Service Commission in March. BGE told the Commission that they had made fixes, including having the software automatically check every 15 minutes and send BGE an alert if a charger is down. BGE also said they had worked with Greenlots to improve the response to future incidents.

December 17, 2019:
The Carroll County Board of Commissioners held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to open the BGE charging stations located in the parking lot of the County Office Building at 225 N. Center Street, Westminster, Maryland.
Carroll County Press Release
Event Video on YouTube

@Lanny