Electrify America - Thoughts at a grand opening

This past Thursday I received some information that Electrify America (EA) may be having a grand opening of their new station in Crossgates Commons, Kate and I were going to be in the area anyways so we decided to drop in try the new chargers out. To our surprise there were EA staff present, we chatted for an hour and found lots of great information.

A little background before we begin, it is easy to get a bad reputation. The recipe is simple:

Haggis - Foods bad reputation poster child 

Start with a bad experience

Mix with a vocal social media user

Add a pinch of prior failures with other similar companies

For extra taste sprinkle in a conspiracy

Optionally substitute bad experience for a hatred or distrust of a technology or brand.

Bake for 20 minutes on a forum and watch it raise as others pile on.

It is unfortunate to watch this occur, the morning of the event I witnessed this on a private Facebook group I was a member of. The group is all about promoting EV ownership, answer questions from new owners, having meetups to get to know each other, and is generally a great community to be a part of. The thread started out positive enough letting people know about an upcoming event, a negative experience was added as a comment and the entire thread went toxic from there. All of the components from the bad reputation recipe was there, starting with a legitimate complaint to a conspiracy theory grounded in fantasy.

Sunrise in North Carolina

Personally I have used EA stations dozens of times, just this past summer we took Zeus on a trip from upstate New York down to Atlanta Georgia with stops in Virgina, Tennessee, and North Carolina to visit family. It was an excellent experience and along the way we used several different charging networks, the vast majority of which was EA. Yes, there was a hiccup along the way, but it was quickly rectified by moving to another of 6 chargers, if there is interest I'll make another post in the future about that trip. We tended to favor EA due to the number of stations at each stop, never was there a station we stopped at that had fewer then 4 stalls.

Back to the commons, when I pulled up I asked a staff member if they were open. They were and today charging was free as they were testing the system, they invited me to pull up to a station and plug in. Kate and I didn't really have any plans, we were around to walk to the mall and maybe spend some of her birthday money, so when they asked if I would be willing to test out 1 more station I told them lets test them all. That put a smile on many of their faces, from there the conversations flowed easily. They loved Zeus's plate and invited us to be part of the event, Zeus was pretty dirty (we were only expecting to try out the new chargers) but I think he still made a great showing.

Zeus with Paul Tonko (20th congressional district). Mr Tonko loved the plate and took a picture of it, he is an excellent advocate for electrification and clean energy. It was awesome having a chance to talk with him.

Left To Right: Noah (Tech), Rich (Product Development Manager for
Northeast), Me, Kate, Matt (Director Government Affairs)

In the hours that lead up to the actual ribbon cutting we had some exclusive time to talk with Noah (Service Technician), Rich (North Eastern Development Manger) and Matt (Director of Government Affairs). We had a lot to talk about, station design, challenging states to install, use of batteries, ChaDeMo, pricing, time to open, future development, reliability and likely a few other items I am not remembering (I didn't have a note pad since I wasn't expecting to have this opportunity). Let cover each of these and my impressions from the conversation.

Station Design
There definitely have been some tweaks to how stations are setup since the first station was installed a couple years ago. One is the cooling system used, this probably the most well known as it is why you see stations running at reduced power. They have updated the stations to use a new cooling system that prevents coolant evaporation. Another item is the charging cords themselves, they have been updated based on driver feedback to be longer. I noticed this myself when connecting to these new stations, I could park the car 5 feet away from the station and still be able to plug in, when I stopped at a station in Knoxville I had to have the car practically touching posts.
When possible they are trying to setup stations as they are pictured here, that will allow the charging of vehicles with something in tow, given the electric trucks coming in the next year that will become more and more important.

Challenging States
Rich is the product development manger for the northeast so I believe that when speaking to this he was limiting it to just that region. What are the most challenging states to have new DCFC's installed? New York and New Jersey, it's all about the permits. Permitting a DCFC station requires much more work then in say Pennsylvania. Need to change something about the installation due to a discovery while installing? In New York and New Jersey the delay is significant vs other areas of the northeast. This may help understand why it appears sometimes that a EA station is put up fairly quickly but then takes many months to actually open.

Use Of Batteries
I asked if this station used batteries to offset demand charges, before we jump into that you may be asked what is a demand charge? In a nutshell a demand charge is a large use of electricity use over a short period or during a peak time. The difference in cost between normal charges and demand charges can be significant, as an example a normal rate may be $.24/kWh, but the demand rate is $8.50 /kWh. If you are charging and consume 50 kWh that is a $425 cost vs a $12. This is an extreme example, but I think you get the point. A battery will store a part of energy used during the charging session, the station then uses just enough electricity from the battery to keep the draw from the electrical grid below the demand threshold.
So is this station using batteries....no. Though there may be in the future, EA is rolling out batteries to stations based on economics. How often is the station used and how big is the demand charge.
They are one of the largest users of Tesla powerpacks, they have a store of them and are rolling them out as needed.