How one condo complex electrified all of its 143 parking spots… for free?!

A condominium complex in Northern California recently installed EV chargers into every single one of its 143 parking spots, future-proofing the whole complex for a fully-electrified future, and it managed to do it with zero cost out of pocket. Here’s how.

Now, right off the bat, we have to come clean: the operative phrase, there, is “out of pocket.” While this installation is still very low-cost, it was only made zero-cost for the complex thanks to a utility incentive from Peninsula Clean Energy (PCE), a local clean energy utility in San Mateo County.

However, that incentive covered $2,000 per spot, and that’s still a really low cost for installing chargers into every single parking spot in a complex nonetheless.

The condo complex is Bayview Condominiums in Millibrae, CA, just South of San Francisco. The region is a hotspot for electric vehicle adoption, so there’s no surprise that we’re seeing some big moves in electrification in the area.

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The installation uses GoPowerEV chargers, a $1,395 low-power “Level 1” charger that can charge two parking spots at just under 2kW each. That’s rather slow compared to the dedicated chargers you’re probably used to, but it’s enough for the vast majority of driver’s needs – with an overnight charge, you can get around 50 miles worth of range on most of today’s EVs.

But if you do need more than that, there’s an option. Each of GoPowerEV’s chargers has 3 plugs: two 120V, 20A NEMA 5-20 outlets, and one 240V, 20A NEMA 6-20 outlet in the center. The chargers are meant to sit between two parking spots, with drivers using the outer low-powered outlets most of the time.

But if one driver needs a quicker charge on any given night, they can take the middle outlet and request more power for a few extra cents per kWh via GoPowerEV’s app (though, still, only 3.3-3.9kW, and only if your neighbor doesn’t need much of a charge).

This isn’t the only provider or the only solution for an apartment complex. Some complexes install a smaller number of higher-powered, shared chargers at a higher cost, and some have chosen to install a more basic, low-powered outlet for every single spot, meaning nobody has to fight for chargers – and that’s the solution Bayview Condominiums went with.

Low powered charging is a good solution for most

The plus side of this lower power charging is that it can be done for low cost. As mentioned above, this project actually cost the condo complex nothing to install. PCE told us that this was an exceptional case, an easy project with no need to dig trenches or run conduit. It also helps with site design for free, and offers the aforementioned $2k per charger incentive (it also offers incentives for higher-powered charging, but requires cost sharing on those projects). Which makes it a bit of a no-brainer for any apartment complex in a similar situation.

Low power charging has become a more popular solution lately for large projects like these lately, as the economics of how cheaply it can be done has really come into focus (and as building codes have changed to accommodate the idea, as happened recently in CA). Each parking spot costs tens of thousands of dollars to build anyway (and even moreso if they’re underground, as is the case at Bayview condos), so a ~$2,000 cost to add EV charging to the spot feels like a drop in the bucket, especially in an EV-heavy area.

Low powered charging is also the favored solution of Forth’s Charge at Home program, because of the low cost and the fact that it covers needs for the vast majority of drivers. Exceptions exist, but it’s always possible for people to backfill a little extra charging with a public charger, work charger, or fast DC charging if a level 1 outlet at home isn’t enough.

Compare, for instance, the cost and magnitude of installing a single 350kW DC fast charger. Yes, this can charge a car in as fast as ~16 minutes or so, but 350kW is a lot of power, creates big spikes in demand, and will usually have a cost in the high five figures to low six figures per charging stall.

Meanwhile, Bayview Condominiums’ entire system has a total power of somewhere on the order of 300kW, and cost about a buck a watt to install (<$2k x 143 units). So, for a similar price as about two fast DC chargers, and with similar overall power delivery levels, the complex was able to electrify every single parking spot. That means nobody has to worry about shuffling around and fighting over the one central charger, everyone can just park in their assigned spots and be full in the morning, the ideal no-stress EV ownership experience.

More apartment charging is better for everyone

But a project like this is not just for areas that already have a lot of EVs, because it can help to enable more EVs. Apartment-dwellers don’t have the easiest time charging, and the trouble of having to search for an apartment that has a charger, or having to go charge publicly at higher cost at often-busy fast chargers takes a lot of the fun out of EV ownership.

So having a charger already set up in the parking lot means your residents will have a much easier time choosing an EV the next time they look into buying a car. And that’s great for everyone – fewer fumes in your parking structure, better air quality in your local community, and another strike in the fight against climate change.

And EV charging is becoming one of the more in-demand features for apartment buildings, with few buildings serving this need. A building can make itself more attractive by adding something like this, for relatively little cost overall.

Electrek’s Take

These options are more for building managers than renters, but this is just another step towards helping to make charging easier for apartment-dwellers. If you’re looking for more resources for apartment EV charging, either as a owner or a renter, find more on that here.

I’ve long said that the only real problem with EVs is charging for people who don’t have access to their own garage. Whether this be apartment-dwellers, street-parkers or the like, the electric car charging experience is often less-than-ideal outside of single family homes, at least in North America.

There are workarounds available, like charging at work, or using Superchargers in “third places” where you often spend time, but these still aren’t optimal. The best bet is just to charge your car wherever it spends most of its time, which is your home. When you do that, EVs outshine everything in convenience.

So there’s a need for solutions in this space, and just this week we’ve heard of two of them: this one, a zero-cost (after incentive) solution to give a good-enough charging solution to everyone in an entire building, and Pando’s updated smart outlet (you may remember that one from an article here on Electrek about how a condo complex installed an EV charger in every parking spot for just $405/unit, thanks to the same PCE incentive).

Hopefully the more competition we see in this space, and the more big projects like these get off the ground successfully and at low cost, the more we can finally move towards solving the problem of apartment charging once and for all.

And, frankly, we also need legislation/building codes to hop in and require this sort of thing, so it becomes the rule rather than the exception and apartment dwellers can feel secure that they’ll be able to find a place to charge. And the lower install costs get, the more realistic a legislative requirement would be.

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