• Posted: April 12, 2023
• 2023 Chicago Auto Show, Blink Charging, Chicago Automobile Trade Association (CATA), Elbert Walters III, EV Charging, EV Charging infrastructure, evse, EVSE installation, Gina Dooley, Jamerson & Bauwens Electrical Contractors, Midwest Interstate Electrical Construction Co., Mike Reynolds, Rebecca Gutierrez

 

Join Chicago’s EV infrastructure experts for a panel discussion that originally took place at the 2023 Chicago Auto Show. Executive Director of Powering Chicago, Elbert Walters III, moderates a discussion between Mike Reynolds, superintendent of Midwest Interstate Electrical Construction, Gina Dooley, project manager and EV division lead at Jamerson & Bauwens Electrical Contractors, and Rebecca Gutierrez, VP of marketing at Blink Charging.

In the second of four panel discussions, Walters guides the EV charging experts through a discussion about EV charging infrastructure considerations for commercial properties.

Walters: Mike, can you introduce yourself and provide insight into things people might want to consider when dealing with HOA boards for EV charging infrastructure.

Reynolds: I’m the superintendent for Midwest Interstate Electrical Construction. We’re a Cook County electrical construction company. Prior to that, I was with the City of Chicago for 22 years as a code enforcement official. The last eight years, I was the chief electrical inspector.

What I’m going to speak to today is the regulatory issues that you as a consumer, homeowner, business owner, HOA president, will run across should you decide to put electric vehicle chargers in. Electrical codes vary from municipality to municipality in the Chicagoland area. It is very important to be aware that a given city or village will have different rules and regulations for your electrical installations. A good reputable electrical contractor, such as the electrical contractors represented by Powering Chicago, will know the electrical code a given city follows and will be aware of the rules that towns follow for securing electrical permits. Most villages or towns follow either the National Electrical Code, a version of the National Electrical Code, or a version of the Chicago Electrical Code. On top of that, most, if not all, will have their own local amendments, so they may follow the NEC National Electrical Code, but they’ll have certain rules and regulations that are germane to that to their town. So as a business owner, a homeowner, an end user, if you’re buying an electric vehicle, you’re going to want to charge it naturally. You’re going to need to know those and you’re going to need to know that your installer does as well.

There will also be required inspections for this electrical work that gets done. The first call you’ll want to make is to that town to talk to an authority having jurisdiction over the electrical installations to make sure that your contractors are doing right by you and that you know that what they’re doing is, in fact, going to pass inspection. Because the last thing you want are delays when you’ve bought the vehicle. Now you’ve spent X amount of dollars for the installation. Then, here you are waiting because the electrical contractor that you hired did not install it properly. The Powering Chicago electrical contractors will be well-versed in all of these processes and will help you get from the start to the finish on time and under budget.

If you’re installing in the City of Chicago. That’s something that I can speak to as being the authority having jurisdiction there. Every electrical contractor must be licensed by the City of Chicago’s Department of Buildings. That means that their company employs a supervising electrician and that person is eligible and available to pull permits and to oversee the installations. Electrical inspections are always required in the City of Chicago. And they should be scheduled in a timely manner by your electrical contractor. That’s something that you’re going to want to hold your contractor to.

The City of Chicago saw a need for the coming growth of EVSE charging, so it put new regulations in place in 2019. These new rules are titled Chicago Electric Vehicles Supply Equipment (EVSE) Ready Requirements and can be found on the internet at Chicago.gov/energycode. These rules now require that electrical infrastructure be built in any building that contains five or more dwelling units for onsite parking and also for any off street parking areas with 30 or more spots that will serve new construction buildings containing any other occupancy.

These EVSE ready requirements were added to the Chicago Zoning Ordinance and applied to projects where the first permit application was started on or after November 1, 2020. The specific rules and regulations for electrical equipment to be installed in those particular occupancies are noted on their website. The state of Illinois also requires that installers of EVSE equipment must be certified to do so. The electricians installing your charging equipment must have taken and successfully passed the EVITP federally-recognized training class. This class is a six week, 18-hour course that is followed by a 35 question exam that must be passed for you to gain certification. You all, as prospective buyers of vehicle charging equipment, will want to make sure that your installers that you’re hiring have these certifications for their electricians. The Powering Chicago electrical group makes sure through their apprentice school and night training that the IBEW 134 member electricians and the contractors that employ them are taking and getting these certifications. You know when you hire from Powering Chicago that you’re getting the right certifications each and every time.

In conclusion, you as a prospective electric vehicle purchaser will have numerous questions that need consideration. Buying an electrical vehicle will require electrical infrastructure upgrades at your business and or home. When you hire a Chicago electrical contractor there will be no question that you have partnered with a qualified contractor that will have the knowledge, skill and required certifications to see your project from start to finish.

Walters: Thank you, Mike. Next, we have Gina Dooley. Gina, will you please share your knowledge and expertise?

Dooley: My name is Gina Dooley, and I’ve been a project manager for Jamerson and Bauwens Electric for 24 years. I’ve worked in the industry for 30 years, and we are currently installing these charging units at several locations. A lot of the dealerships are looking for them so that when the vehicle comes off the truck, it is charged, fully charged.

I go out there to the project and I assess the electrical infrastructure to see if the building is capable, to see if the facility that wants these chargers is capable of taking on this added power. There’s several different models, and I’ll let Blink talk to that, but we just assess the electrical end of it to see if you can take on any extra charging units. If not, we’ll give you our recommendation on what we can do if it’s at a new service or if it’s upgrading what you have so that we can get these done. And then we’ll talk about where the best location is to put these chargers. Nine times out of ten, the best location for these charges is as close to the service as possible. Sometimes that is not possible. We understand that, but we try to get as close to the service coming into the building as possible so that you don’t have voltage loss.

And we also put that in the safest possible place. You don’t want it in the middle of a parking lot where it’s going to get run over every two weeks and then you got to replace this. It’s expensive equipment. Let’s face it. So we’re going to put it in the safest place possible. That’s also convenient for everybody. And then we talk about what equipment will be installed and go over that. And once that’s done, and we have the equipment on site, or we decide which equipment is best for you in your facility or your home. We come out, and we put the pipe in the wire. We put the unit in, and we even start the unit up for you. A lot of these units are shipped from overseas, there may be a software update that needs to be done. We walk through that with the dealer or with the owner of that unit and we get that thing communicated before we leave the site.

And then at that point, once we’re done, then whoever the units are from, you can contact them for any update on anything else. But we get you up and running from beginning to end. We follow all the code restrictions that are asked of us in that facility in that town. We pull all the permits, we make sure that the permits are pulled, inspected before we leave. We get a final inspection if need be. We’ll call the inspector ahead of time and say, ‘hey, this is the idea we have. Can I get your feedback?’ And the inspectors are glad to come out and talk with us to let us know, ‘hey, no, that’s not good, we don’t like that so that we’re not doing it twice, and we’re not wasting your money or our time or our money.

If it’s in an open area, we’ll even put safety bollards in front of it so it doesn’t get run over, if we feel that it’s going to be a hazard. We don’t want the equipment getting damaged. We’ll also put concrete bollards in front of it. So we will work with the customer with whatever they need to do, and we’ll work with your infrastructure to make sure that we can make it work. If not, we’ll give our recommendations on what we can do. All of our electricians that we hire to install these are certified electricians.

These are considered a continuous load. So it’s not something we can just scab off of something else to hook this unit up. It’s got to be hooked up correctly. We don’t want anybody’s house burning down and having a problem with it later on down the road. So our installation is done from beginning to end 100% per the code, per the recommendations of the manufacturer.

Walters: Rebecca, can you share some information about the different types of chargers that are available?

Gutierrez: I started with Blink in 2019. It’s been a sea change since 2019. The company itself has been around since 2009. At that time, everyone laughed at us and they said electric vehicles will never catch on. Look around, guys. I think it’s happening. Okay, so luckily our gamble paid off. We’re in a really good spot.

Blink has been around for a while. We are publicly traded on the Nasdaq, so go ahead and buy some stock because it’s going to continue to be a sea change in our industry. And we do offer charging stations for all locations. So, yes, we sell home equipment for your single family home. It is, truth be told, the smallest portion of our business, because what we really do and what really makes Blink different as an EV charging provider is we prefer to own and operate our own equipment as often as we can. So what that means is we will go to a location and partner with you and do some kind of a revenue share model where we’ll own the charging hardware. You’ll make it ready for the EV charger, and then we’ll do a revenue share on the utilization.

What our company really wants to do is be the gasoline vendor of the future. Our CEO actually jokes. He’s like, ‘I bet you you don’t know who actually made the gas pump you used to pump your gas. But I bet you, you know the brand on the sign, right? You know whose actual fuel is in there.’ So that’s what makes us a little bit different.

What we really have focused on up to now has been Level 2 charging. So a quick EV 101 for those who maybe don’t know or aren’t as familiar, there’s three types of charging for your electric vehicle. There’s Level 1 charging, which just forget about it, guys. You’re not going to plug it into your wall outlet. It’s going to take forever. It’s going to be a bad experience. Just please don’t do it, okay? And if you do, remember me when you do it and you’re all frustrated because your battery is still not charging.

Then there’s Level 2. This is where Blink has really spent a lot of focus. Level 2 is not going to be your Tesla supercharger. This is going to be a very smooth, steady, continuous charging that’s going to take 4 hours, 8 hours for your EV. It’s good for the car, it’s good for the utility in the grid, and it’s just good for your pocketbook because it’s cheaper as well. This equipment out on the left, those are your Level 2 chargers. They can range from 100 amps, which outputs 19.2 kilowatts, which right now very few cars can actually take. We did that because we’re owners and operators. So we went to the very maximum capacity of our equipment because we don’t want to have to go swap it out in a couple of years. So for businesses, if you’re looking for, you know, your commercial real estate or if you’re looking for your multifamily, that’s a good decision because that means it’s good for years to come as cars advance in their technology.

Then we have a multifamily specific. So 90% of people want to charge at home, whether you live in a single family home or whether you live in a multifamily home, it’s a little more complicated than multifamily. You may have shared garages, you may have shared parking spots or not assigned parking spots. So we come out and we look at those opportunities and try to get a good solution for you. Our MQ 200 product was designed for that. It’s a lower cost point because HOAs usually aren’t flush with cash and don’t want to do a lot of special assessments. So that’s a really good option.

Then there’s the big guys, right? So everybody is thinking of DC fast charging. It’s been in the news like crazy, if you follow politics, there are $7 billion coming out for infrastructure for DC fast. This is going to get your battery about 80% charged in 20 or 30 minutes depending on the equipment. Sounds great right? Who needs to charge that fast? How often does your car actually sit in your garage not moving? So truth be told, it’s excellent for corridors, it’s excellent for road trips. If you’re not staying at a hotel, if you’re at a hotel, you’re going to be all night. You should probably just have L2 charging, right? So it’s good to keep people moving along the interstates and along the highways. Please don’t ask me if you’re going to install DC fast in your house. I don’t think you want to. You could buy a whole new house for the cost of it.

So those are the three different types of charging. And we actually try to help you understand the different types of charging because faster is not always better with the EV charging. Faster can have negative impacts on your battery as well. So you really want to understand what you’re getting yourself into. And just think how often your car just sits parked versus how often you use it. And that can make you think about charging a little bit differently. So that’s how we come at it from a hardware standpoint. And then that’s why we partner with great people like this to actually get it deployed. We do not do installations.

Walters: Rebecca, you stated that Blink looks to partner with the equipment buyers and can you provide a little bit more depth on what that process looks like?

Gutierrez: A couple of different things you have to consider. Is it going to be public or private? If it’s going to be in a multifamily property, but it’s going to be restricted access, so you’re only going to be using it for residents, then you need a little bit different hardware in the technology inside of the hardware. You probably don’t need full payment processing capabilities.

So one of the chargers back there, the white one, it has an external credit card reader on there. Guess what, guys? That’s got California’s name all over it. So California passed a law. They need to have an external credit card reader. So we had to come up with a solution for that. You’re not going to need that if you have restricted access. We have other options for you. We have cheaper options for you because it doesn’t need all the bells and whistles.

So understanding how you’re going to use it. We have an awful lot of hospitals and health care facilities that are installing chargers. They do need that. They do need an opportunity where both public drivers can come in charge at that location, but also maybe doctors and maybe they’re going to give free charging or discounted charging to the employees of the hospital, but they want to charge the people visiting the hospital. So those kinds of considerations are super important.

I was talking to a multifamily property owner not too long ago, and one of the first questions I said is, ‘look around your parking garage, if you have a multifamily property or an office parking deck or something. How many EVs are you seeing right now?’ Just because you know they’re coming doesn’t mean you have to install all the hardware right now either. Maybe you can start small, put in all the wiring right now because that’s only going to get crazy more expensive. But you don’t need 16 chargers, maybe you can do with two. And then as more EVs come, you can add the equipment on and on and on.

Dooley: I agree here. We need to look at the future when we’re putting in the electrical. You don’t want to stop at just one charger, it’s going to cost you twice as much money to do that. So you’d like to do it a little bit at a time. I get it. It’s not as expensive, but it will cost you more in the long run if you don’t look into the future on your electrical side of it. You don’t have to buy the equipment, but let’s try and get the electrical in for the future.

Walters: Gina, can you provide a little bit more information on what’s included in that assessment?

Dooley: We would look at the service coming into the building. We would look to see if there’s any availability for additional chargers in that building or in that home. And we would look at the next steps that we would have to take. So I would walk around and I would look at the incoming service in a multidwelling facility or in a hotel or any commercial building. And then I would look around at some of the other branch panels that they possibly have in the facility to see if they have enough power to feed a charger here. If they’re spread out, I might be able to take something from this panel.

If it looks like it’s going to be tight and I’m not sure I would get meters out there to read the actual usage of that building to see where we stand. So it may just be a couple days for me to get that information. I would have meters on that, let it run for a couple of days to see what your usage is in your actual power. I also get a year of all the ComEd bills. Those ComEd bills will also tell me a lot of information on your usage and what your peak months are, that you use a lot of electricity and some of the lower peak times. That gives us a lot of information to help with that assessment also.