• Posted: April 14, 2023
• 2023 Chicago Auto Show, Bob Hattier, ChargePoint, ComEd, Connelly Electric, Deana Haynes, Denise Munoz, EV Charging infrastructure, EV industry, IBEW Local 134, Illinois Green Alliance, Illinois IBEW Renewable Energy Fund, Nick Pupich, Renewable Energy

 

Join Chicago’s renewable energy experts for a panel discussion on the topic of resiliency in the electric vehicle (EV) industry. The Executive Director of Powering Chicago, Elbert Walters III moderates a discussion between Bob Hattier, IBEW Local 134 business representative and executive director at Illinois IBEW Renewable Energy Fund, Nick Pupich, director of controls & specialized solutions at Connelly Electric, Denise Munoz, director of strategic planning and innovation at ComEd, and Deana Haynes, director of commercial real estate at ChargePoint and board member for Illinois Green Alliance.

In the third of four panel discussions that originally took place at the 2023 Chicago Auto Show, Walters guided these renewable energy experts through a discussion about the current state of EVs and charging infrastructure for residential and commercial properties.

Hattier: I am a business representative with IBEW Local 134, where I focus on renewable energy, energy storage and electric vehicle infrastructure. I’m also the executive director of the Illinois IBEW Renewable Energy Fund, which is our statewide training organization, covering all of those technologies where we partner with all the IBEW locals, various high schools, community colleges and community-based groups as a pathway into our apprenticeship programs.

We have a very ambitious goal in Illinois through the Climate and Technical Jobs Act. We have a goal of 1 million registered EVs on the road in Illinois by the year 2030. Anyone have any idea how many EVs are on the road currently? As of January 15th, it’s 60,000. So we’re about 6% of our goal. And while that seems like it’s not there yet. Last time I checked, this number was a month ago, and we’re about 55,000. So we’re looking at about 5,000 EVs added per month. And if we keep that pace, we will reach that goal of 1 million in 15 years. The problem is our 1 million goal is by 2030, and that’s not 15 years from now. So hopefully after this event, with a lot of people seeing and test driving these vehicles, we’re going to see a lot more going out after that.

So when we talk about electric vehicles, there is a large variety of options out there. The next question always comes up is about charging. And we hear terms like range anxiety. We hear about the lack of public charging stations. The reality is 80% of EV drivers charge at home. And you hear about the long time it takes to charge based on the level of charge to a Level 1, Level 2. They’re charging just what they use that day. They’re not going from empty all the way back up to full. They don’t need a full 8 hours of charge to get back to where they need to be. They may have only driven 20, 30 miles that day, and that’s something that can easily be accomplished overnight.

So a lot of the naysayers out there are a lot of their arguments really are based on extreme examples and not really the reality of most people driving EVs.

But right now, just to put that number out there, there are 2,500 charging stations in Illinois right now, which is actually a pretty good number. There’s a couple of states ahead of us, but we’re in the top ten for infrastructure that’s been installed. And the estimated goals, we need 15,000 to support the 1 million EVs on the road. So we’re on our way there, and I’m sure the other panelists here can address that a little bit better.

But what I want to talk about is the benefits of going EV. We have several different benefits and one of those is the fact that you’re doing your part to help the environment. Our vehicles that are out on the road right now are emitting every day. The infrastructure it takes to fuel those vehicles are emitting every day, the refining of fossil fuels to give us the fuel to put in our tanks so we can emit is also emitting every day. And we need to do our part to make sure we can clean up our transportation based emissions. And driving an EV is a major way of doing that. Getting into something that’s pretty interesting here, the average EV drives three miles per kilowatt hour of energy. So if you think about that, if you’re driving the average fuel economy on a road in Illinois right now is 24 miles per gallon. So if you are trying to drive that same amount of distance with one gallon of gasoline with an EV, it’s going to take about eight kilowatt hours, it’ll cost you just about a dollar.

We all know what happens with fuel prices. They are coming down now, but we’re still seeing our fuel up yesterday, about three and a half dollars. So you can see direct savings right there. But there’s other savings that we have to address. And that’s the fact that by using the electric stored energy directly, we are being a major component in reducing our carbon emissions, because to create that one gallon of gasoline, it takes eight kilowatt hours of energy. So on average, with the refining process, we’re already using the energy of eight kilowatt hours. So there are emissions associated with all of our energy generation. Illinois is actually pretty clean if you consider our nuclear fleet and our renewable portfolio. We still have coal, we still have natural gas, but that eight kilowatt hours is being generated regardless. We can put it in our vehicles and then drive directly off of that with zero emissions. Or we can use that one gallon of gasoline created with that energy and then release our own emissions on top of it. So that’s one thing we have to keep in mind. And I kind of got off track, so I’m going to pass it on to the next speaker.

Pupich: My name is Nick Pupich. I have been in the electrical industry for 27 years. I’ve been the IBEW Local 134 electrician for 16 years. I’ve been in the EV industry for over 11 years with over 800 EV installs in Level 2 and Level 3. So a lot of times that we will get called to come in to talk to property managers, associations, business management teams about their future infrastructure and the infrastructure that they have now. And as a contractor, what I would say to association boards and business owners is come up with a plan of what are you looking at now and what are you looking at in the future for EV charging stations. And I will always say start with a five year plan and then work backwards.

Once you get that five-year plan of how many charging stations that you would want, you will come out and then you would call a Powering Chicago contractor. As a Powering Chicago contractor, what we’ll do is we’ll come out to your building or business and we will assess the existing electrical infrastructure that you have, your network capabilities and your cellular service. And we will start building a game plan for this five year bridge that you would want to complete. We’ll start with the first year, to assess your electrical infrastructure that you have now and are we able to use it? Will we be able to get rebates for you for this existing electrical infrastructure? We will also work with you on getting an economical budget for your future, a five year plan. And it’s very important now to get this five year plan done where you have your budgetary numbers and you know where you want to go because rebates will be coming out and they will be going and you will need to have everything ready for that.

So in your one-year plan, you might only need two EV charging stations right now. Let’s bring out the power, let’s oversize our conduits so that the next next phase, it’s a cheaper price or in the five years the cost will come down. Working with property managers, that’s one of the first things I will always tell them is you have a lot of power capabilities already in your buildings. We need to assess the systems to come up with ideas and how we can bring in renewable energy to make your systems work better and more efficiently for you. So I will always tell our clients to come up with that five year plan first. Know what you’ll need, know your budget numbers too. I’ll come into many different situations where no one knows what they really want and it’s wasting everyone’s time and effort not knowing. You have to make that plan now of where do you want to go or where you’re at and where do you want to go.

With expanding new technologies that are coming out. It’s very interesting because, yes, the capabilities are growing and the technologies are making it easier. Tomorrow, it’s going to be less and less on the grid. But at the same time, we have to assess what you have now. So my best suggestion for anyone in a property management position or a business position is to have their five-year goal and know what your broad budget is now. That will help you so much in determining your five year plan.

Munoz: Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Denise Munoz. I’m the director of strategic planning and Innovation with ComEd. I work in our customer solutions department. We support all of our ComEd customers on the clean energy solutions, which includes energy efficiency, which is actually something very near and dear to my heart.

I’ve been with ComEd for almost 31 years. I worked in all aspects of energy. So, you know, everything that I’m hearing from Nick and Bob, really interests me as well. I’ve overseen construction crews in building out our smart grid that we’ve been focused on for over a decade. I’ve actually been on the planning side, so I know what it takes to get new wires and new poles and transformers and the infrastructure ready to support the additional load coming out of substations that are being built.

But what’s been near and dear to my heart is really working with our customers. And today, I’m here to talk about our EV tool kit, because I think a lot of the questions that we get from our customers is, ‘I’m interested’ or ‘I don’t know where the chargers are’ or ‘what’s it going to take?’ So we have a great tool that is available for all of you. You can easily go online and go to ComEd.com/EV.

You might wonder why ComEd wants to talk about electric vehicles. Most importantly, we would love it when you are to the point of purchasing that electric vehicle to notify us. We want to track all the installations and we want to make sure we’re ensuring, delivering reliable service. With the increase in load, we need to track that information. It’s not a requirement, but we know customers are now even looking beyond electric vehicles in their home. We’re starting to hear about full electrification. Induction cooking is something that customers are also talking to us about. Maybe heat pumps in the home.

But if I can go into a little bit more detail on the tool kit so you have some idea of what’s in there. If you’re currently looking at a type of vehicle that you’re interested in, you can log into the tool kit and you can do some personalized cost savings just for you. If you are a ComEd customer, you can log in, you can go in and input your account information. It has your history. So it will load that information in there for you. You can select the type of vehicle that you’re interested in. So we have a big repository of a lot of the electric vehicles that you’re seeing here today. You can put in your ComEd rates, what you’re paying on your bill. And we know some customers don’t purchase their supply from ComEd, you actually can go in and personalize your rate into the tool kit as well. You can put in how many miles you drive a year. I think we have a default for the cost of gas per gallon, but we do update that periodically.

When you run the numbers, what we’re seeing is no matter where you’re at on your journey, customers are on average saving about $2,000 a year with an electric vehicle. We know it’s not for everyone. But again, folks are at different parts of their journey in looking at EV vehicles.

The aggressive goal of a million EVs on the road by 2030, we are definitely supportive of clean it, the Climate Equitable Jobs Act, and we want our customers to be able to come to us as a trusted energy advisor for any of their questions related to EVs. We also have a solar tool kit, if you’re interested. If you want to just look at other information related to your bills, I’d highly encourage you to visit our website.

Haynes: I’m Deana Haynes, director of commercial real estate with ChargePoint. We are an EV charging company that designs our software and manufactures our hardware in one integrated system. We’re the largest network out there with over 250,000 EV charging ports. And fun fact, a driver plugs into the ChargePoint network every second or less. So I don’t want to go into the whole spiel about who ChargePoint is, happy to answer questions about our company afterward.

What I do want to share is really what we are seeing around EV adoption in Chicago and Illinois and around the country. So as Bob mentioned in his presentation, EV adoption continues to grow. So you mentioned that there are about 5,000 cars that are hitting the road every month in Illinois. I also did a little bit of research and found that across the country, EV sales grew by 66% between 2021 and 2022. Local to the state of Illinois, there was an increase of about 57% of EVs on the road in the state. So we’re pretty close to the national average and continuing to grow. Based on what we’re seeing on the show floor, I anticipate that adoption will continue to accelerate and continue to grow.

What we’re also seeing is that EV infrastructure and providing access to EV charging is no longer an amenity. So for those that might live in an apartment building or as you go to work or to a shopping mall, easy charging is not a nice amenity to have. It’s required infrastructure. And part of that is because most drivers charge their vehicle at home or at work 80% of the time actually. And the concept of driving somewhere to drive somewhere is really becoming a nonexistent concept in the world of EVs. You charge your car where you’re parked.

So we’re also seeing that in this adoption of EVs and the requirement for EV charging that building codes and building policies are being updated to align with the requirements. We’re seeing things like EV codes, which means that for new construction, whether there’s a requirement to have new buildings activate EV charging upon occupancy or even just have the long term planning, as Nick pointed out, where there is capacity in the panel, we’re starting to see this more and more, not only in the state here, but across the country. We’re also seeing that there’s a lot of education that’s needed. And so I’m really excited that we’re having this panel here because I think range anxiety, as you heard earlier, is also a really important topic. And, you know, it’s important to recognize that the average driver is really just in their daily life going in and around town or commuting to and from the workplace.

So they’re driving tens of miles, not hundreds of miles, but there’s a lot of concern about electric vehicles and their range. And although we’re seeing an increased range available in many new vehicles, some with up to 400 or 500 miles of range, that’s not needed unless you’re really going on a road trip or perhaps if you commute to and from Wisconsin every day, I could understand that might be a short term concern as EV charging continues to be installed. But really it’s not a concern.

I don’t know how many of you are taking road trips fairly often, but I think, you know, considering that people charge at home or at work most of the time and are only going tens of miles, range anxiety is really just that. It’s anxiety. And more often than not, it’s a concern that is not actually real.

Now for those that are in less urban or less dense environments or are taking a road trip along highways, there are incentives that are available. There are state incentives, there are federal incentives that are available that are really helping serve as a catalyst for the transformation of transportation. And there’s funding that’s specifically allocated towards adding EV charging to major highway corridors. Denise mentioned CEJA earlier and there is funding available for that. I would also add that there is funding available not only for the infrastructure but for vehicles themselves and the entire EV ecosystem. So grid modernization applies to that as well.

Walters: My first question goes to Mr. Hattier. Understanding and knowing that there needs to be some kind of standard, can you speak to the level of standards that we have and the ability and capability of those within the Powering Chicago network who install this equipment?

Hattier: So Bert is exactly correct there. When we think about this infrastructure getting installed now, we’re talking about a change in your transportation method. You’re making a big commitment if you’re going with an EV and you want to know that that infrastructure is going to be there for you for the entire time that you’re driving that vehicle. So it’s very important that we do have quality installations, and how we do that is on a multifold front. We have quality products that go through UL Listing, just like any other electrical appliance that we have. We have quality training, something that we do through the IBEW with our partnership program. There’s also the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Training program, which is a course for certified electricians to take that covers everything about EV charging from evaluating your electrical service, recommending any upgrades or any changes there. All the way through the infrastructure and operations and maintenance of that equipment.

So really, it’s a combination of industry, our contractors and our members. But public education was brought up at the end of our last session. That’s absolutely important. We need to make sure that the event we have right now is not the one and only and that everyone understands that that public infrastructure that gets installed out there, it is certified for 10,000 users. We need to make sure that that is out there, we know the products can last that long because you’re not going to make that commitment unless you know what’s there. Beyond the product, though, you need to make sure that that wiring is done correctly too. Because this is an emerging industry, any time there’s something that goes wrong, it gets a lot of press. And you do hear about fires that have happened and a lot of those have to do with the infrastructure in buildings where people try to do their own modifications to their electrical system or they didn’t properly sized the wire or they didn’t properly evaluate the electrical service.

Walters: So this question is directed towards Ms. Munoz. I want to ask you for those who are being guided to take advantage of the off peak energy use for charging, can you share an idea of what realistic savings will look like and that can be achieved by making the switch? And is there a resource? I know you have the toolkit, but is there a guide that can show them gas prices because we know it differs depending on what geographical area you’re in.

Munoz: And I did mean to address the savings in the specific options we have for rates. ComEd offers two rates to our customers. Most of us are probably on the fixed rate of electricity and that averages about 11.7 cents per kilowatt hour. Now, we know most customers who are looking to purchase EVs, will more likely be charging their vehicles at night. So we do offer an hourly pricing rate. That rate on average is about 7.4 cents. So you can see there is right there a savings of $0.04 per kilowatt hour. So depending on how long you need to charge your vehicle, I think you have highlighted that not everybody discharges their battery completely. So they just may need a couple of hours to do that at home. So we do offer an hourly pricing rate. What I meant to also include in my discussion earlier on the EV tool kit calculator, you can go in and actually put in that option if you want to switch to the hourly pricing rate, you know, you’re free to do so. If you have more questions about it, you know, we have an hourly pricing specialist that you can talk to anyone who’s possibly interested in changing their rate structure to take more advantage of the lower cost during the off peak hourly pricing timeframe.

Hattier: I’m actually going to add one more thing to that. One of the other benefits of going electric with your transportation is the fact that you can produce your own electrons at home. You can’t produce gasoline at home, but you can size a solar electric system can easily handle the amount of travel that you’re doing every day. So when you’re meeting with a contractor and pursuing these, talk about all the things that you’re considering because we may be able to size that photovoltaic system or solar electric system to meet your daily commuting needs without any problem at all. But if you’re thinking about decarbonization, as I brought up earlier, we want to know that, too, because I can get into the other products that we select if we’re modifying or upgrading your electrical service. So it’s really opening up a lot of doors. And all these industries are tied together, including the fact that EV is also stored energy that can be used for other purposes. So if there is an outage or if there is a time that you need standby power, you can, depending on the vehicle you purchased, you may be able to use that energy for that purpose, too. And that has a value as well.

Walters: I have two more questions before we open it up to the audience. This is for you, Nick. Can you talk about some of the difficulties that you’ve seen with the commercial customers who are looking at a more commercial or a multi dwelling unit and what kind of solutions you’ve come up with.

Pupich: Let’s start off with the residential side. If you have a multi dwelling unit with multiple subbasements, we find this a lot where there’s problems networking the charging stations. So a contractor like Connelly Electric will come on site, we’ll test to see what your cellular system is and what type of network that you have. So we’ll be able to remedy the solution where we had one building that had ten charging stations, five on the subbasement and then five on the regular basement floor. We were able to put in a cellular repeater for them and it was able to not only give them just for those two floors, but we were able to give them I think they had six more floors. So there’s a lot on both sides that you need to look at right away. When you have an electrical contractor come out and assist. On the industrial side or the commercial side, a lot of times they are looking for rebates, but they have to go through the rebates to understand, okay, are you in a proper location for that rebate? Are you close to a highway? I know a lot of businesses are always asking me this question. So you have to do a little bit of more due diligence on what the rebates are asking to understand. Okay, well, maybe this is the right location for your business to put a Level 2 or a Level 3 EV charger.

Haynes: I want to piggyback a little bit on that too, Nick. So in terms of planning for five years, I would also say that it’s important to look for technology that enables networked charging. There are a lot of solutions that are out there, but networked charging reduces the strain on the grid. It ultimately reduces installation costs and allows you an opportunity to expand and provide more EV charging with less… I’ll call it infrastructure, but you know, less power required from a panel, less conduit that’s needed and again, reduces just drain overall. And so, it’s really important to understand what technology you are adding and that it really can support your long-term efforts.

Pupich: As a contractor in seeing the growth of the product, you’ll know right away if there’s an issue. So we will literally get a call in 5 minutes when, you know, we will know at the same time. So that is huge. If you do have an issue with your charging station, you’re going to be able to have a contractor come out in less than an hour to see what the issue is and fix that. So you’re absolutely right. It’s been just fantastic.