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This video is quite a bit different from my usual subject matter.

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I know my subscribers largely didn’t subscribe for this, but I hope you’ll find it at least

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somewhat interesting and/or thought provoking.

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Anyone who’s browsed my older videos knows that I drive a Chevy Volt, and when it came

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time to get my own place to live, I ended up signing the next 30 years of my life over

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to a bank and “bought” a condo, or at least will have done so by 2046.

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That hurts to say out loud.

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Now a large part of why I got my Volt (a used 2013 model) back in 2015 was that I didn’t

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know what living situation I’d be in when I got out of school, and I didn’t want to

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discover I couldn’t get around with a pure EV.

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From when I moved in September of 2016 until May 1st of 2017, I could only charge it at

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work, which still got me around 70 miles per gallon as the 8 and a half hours of charging

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from a 110 outlet would pretty much take me one way.

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But it felt like a waste as my 70 mile commute could have been 100% electric if only I could

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also charge at home.

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I really wanted to install an EV charging station in my parking spot, but didn’t really

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know how to get that done.

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Well...

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This is my parking spot, and as you can see, there’s an EV charging station on the wall.

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In this video, I want to share my experience with you.

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More than anything this is storytime, but I hope that this video can serve as both an

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inspirational video to those who want to install an EVSE and are in a situation like mine,

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and as a resource for property owners/managers who would like ideas of how to handle a request

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from a unit owner or renter to install a charger.

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First, who should you talk to?

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This will obviously depend on your building’s ownership and management, but a good place

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to start is almost certainly your building’s management company if you have one.

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I’ll start out by saying that currently, condo owners will probably have it much easier

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than apartment renters.

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Because condominium owners generally have a percentage ownership of the real property

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itself, you have more weight on the decisions that get made.

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For example, in the deed to my unit is exclusive use of the portion of the common area that

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is my parking space.

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Essentially I own easement rights to this space, and so long as I don’t break any

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rules, it’s mine to deal with.

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People in rental apartments have to convince the owners that installing a charging station

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would be a good investment for encouraging new rentals or maintaining current residents.

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That might be hard.

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If you live in a condo building, the management company is probably gonna tell you that you

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need to bring this up with the homeowners association.

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Cool.

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To make this as frictionless as possible, you should make clear that you in no way want

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to be a burden to the association or your fellow owners.

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I think in general no one should expect the association to pay for even part of your installation,

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particularly since you’ll probably be the only one who can use the charger, at least

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initially.

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I approached the condo board in two steps, which will probably be how you’ll have to

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do it, too.

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The first thing I did was find a good contact.

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It turns out that the board member who gave me my welcoming orientation and who in general

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was an awesome resource was board president.

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So that was handy.

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I worked with her as well as the property manager to explain what I wanted to do, and

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asked if I could arrange for some electricians to investigate how we would get power to the

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spot, and how much the installation would cost.

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We worked together to create a proposal for the board, and at the meeting in February,

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the board approved my request.

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So I started looking for electricians.

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Note that they did not approve the installation, merely the information search.

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Here’s a word of advice: look for far more bids than you think you want.

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I contacted four electricians, and only one actually managed to show up.

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I don’t know if this was due to the fact that they didn’t want to work with a condo

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building or what, but keep that in mind.

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The one electrician who did show his face gave me a proposal that was unsettling, but

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this was largely due to distance.

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On that note, a bit about technicalities.

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Every building is unique.

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Obviously.

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And there are a whole lot of factors that will influence how your installation gets

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done.

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The biggest among them is how power is distributed in the building.

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Ideally, the electric meters for the units would be located in or near to the garage.

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If this were the case, it would be pretty straight forward for an electrician to run

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a new circuit from that meter.

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If your building is set up like this, congratulations!

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You’ve got it easy.

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If the supply can be tapped from the unit owner’s (or renter’s) meter, the only

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thing to get sorted is how to run the wiring.

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I wasn’t so lucky.

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My building is pretty old, circa 1975-ish, and as such the need for metered electricity

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to parking spots was in nobody’s mind at the time it was built.

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Inside this electrical room, you will find only one electric meter--that for the common

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supply of the building--hallways and parking lot lights, common area A/C, the garage heaters,

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etc.

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And therein lies the biggest issue.

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You see, the electric meters for the units are on the floors, with this area only having

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these large Buck-Rodgersy Zinsco service disconnects that each feed two floors.

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The meters for individual units are on the floors, and there was no feasible way to run

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wiring back downstairs into the electrical room.

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Like most large buildings, we’ve got a three phase electrical supply.

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Three phase electricity is, weird, at least to someone who has never dealt with anything

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but general household split phase service.

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But, it’s not a concern for EV charging.

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In fact, you might want to make this clear to your electrician.

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When he gave me my first estimate, my electrician thought I would need a step-up transformer

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to bring the 208v supplied by the three-phase panels up to 240V.

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You should know this is completely unnecessary.

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You see, the people who were coming up with the standards for EV charging, namely the

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Society of Automotive Engineers, knew that 208/120 three phase power is common as dirt

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in large industrial buildings in the US, and as such, it would really suck if EV’s couldn’t

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charge from this voltage.

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So, they made sure that they can, and most if not all EV charging units will accept this

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voltage.

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The fact that my electrician apparently didn’t know this was, shall I say, concerning.

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To his credit, upon showing him in the installation instructions for my EVSE that it can in fact

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be run on two legs of a three-phase supply, he quickly corrected the estimate.

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As a side note, if you are working with 208 volts for your installation, you should know

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this will have an impact on charge time.

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My Clipper Creek HCS-40 supplies the car with 32 amps, which is 7.7 kW of power at standard

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split phase 240.

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At 208 volts, this is only 6.6 kW charging, or about 86% of that at 240.

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When sizing your charger, you should keep this in mind.

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My Chevy Volt only accepts 3.3 kW so this is a bit overkill at this point, but I like

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to keep the future in mind.

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Back to the installation.

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My initial estimate was about 5 thousand dollars.

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That made my heart sink a lot.

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I was prepared to spend around 2 thousand, especially since local code requires hard

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pipe conduit for the entire install, with armored cable being out of the question.

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But 5 was outlandish.

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Turns out, more than half of that cost was due to installation length.

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Back to that tricky logistics crap.

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This is a map of our garage’s layout, not to scale.

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My spot when I moved in was here.

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That meant electricity had to get all the way from the electrical room to this spot.

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The longer you go, the beefier your wire gauge has to be, which means not only is more conduit

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and labor needed, but the wire gauge had to go from 8 gauge up to 2 gauge.

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Yikes.

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As I was singing the blues to our board president about how expensive it would be, I jokingly

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offered to switch spots with her.

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You see, this is her spot.

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Much closer to the electric room.

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And much to my surprise, she was on board.

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In fact she was elated because her spot kinda sucks.

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You have to navigate your car between a column and a wall, like this.

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With her Ford Edge, her car at the time she bought her unit, this was a chore to say the

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least.

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She actually downsized to the Escape because of her spot.

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We agreed to change spaces, and this brought the cost of my installation down to just under

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two thousand dollars.

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This was certainly a matter of luck, so I don’t expect your experience to be the same.

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But in case you do run into a similar opportunity, you should know that because the use of the

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space is included in the deed, we had to send a form to the County Recorder’s office to

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legally change spaces.

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Exciting.

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This is the last part unique to my installation, and then I’ll spin the focus a bit back

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to the side of property managers and HOA boards.

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Because we could only get power from the common supply, it would only be fair to account for

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my electricity use and reimburse the association.

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I don’t want anyone paying for my fuel, and neither does the board.

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Initially, I thought it would be easy to use the reports generated from OnStar to determine

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my usage, but there were two headwinds.

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First was that this shows consumption from the battery, not from the wall, so the consumption

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here will be low.

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Second was that I also charge at work.

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In fact close to 50% of this figure comes from my free electricity at work.

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I had worked out a way to account for the number of charges at work in a month, and

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even built a Google Sheets doc to calculate this, but I realized this would be a pain

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and it also might leave room for suspicion of false accounting.

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Therefore, I asked my electrician how much it would cost to install a sub-meter on the

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charger, where everyone could see the amount of electricity my vehicle was responsible

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for.

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It would add about $500 to the install, which I thought was reasonable.

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So, I approached the board at the next meeting with my proposal, estimate, certificate of

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insurance from the electrician, and a little something else.

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If your board is only familiar with the giant display-like EV charging stations at malls,

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they might be put-off by thinking about that monstrosity being in the garage.

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I had already purchased my EVSE from Clipper Creek, and decided to use a little photo-shop

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trickery to allow the board to see roughly what this would look like when finished.

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And with no hesitation, it was approved.

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On May 1st the install was completed, and since then I’ve driven over 6,000 miles

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and since roughly half of my charging is free at work, it’s cost me about 90 bucks.

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With gas prices around $2.50, this is like driving a car that gets 166 mpg.

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And that’s why I wanted to do this.

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At the beginning of each month, I send in my latest consumption figure along with a

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check to cover the cost to my association via the management company.

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I’m sure we could work out a deal where my monthly assessments are increased by 25

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dollars or so to cover my charging, but I’m worried that when I sell my unit, the assessment

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amount won’t be corrected back.

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For now, I’m content spending a few minutes to write and mail a check to save over 75

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bucks every month.

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And now, here’s some things for property managers to consider.

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Firstly, who pays for it?

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If this is for one individual, obviously that individual.

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You should also make clear who’s responsible for the actual charging station.

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As I financed the installation, the charging station, wires, conduit running to it, and

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the circuit breaker inside the electrical panel are all essentially my property and

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my problem.

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Although it’s in the common area, I know that should anything go wrong with it, that’s

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on me.

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It may be wise to have that established in writing if you’re worried about someone

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pulling a fast one.

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But here’s another angle: especially for those apartment building owners, you could

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make this a profit center.

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If you install a bank of charging stations, you could charge a premium parking fee for

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these spots.

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Combined with time-of-use metering, this could be a significant profit center if charging

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were limited to off-peak hours.

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Condo associations could do the same thing, perhaps to boost reserves.

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However, you should be careful with your fees.

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If your fees make operating an EV approach the cost of conventional fuels, you won’t

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get any takers.

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One of the central issues will be that of expansion.

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What happens when someone else wants to do this?

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Well, there’s no reason the next person couldn’t go through the same process as

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the person before.

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However, there will eventually be the issue of building capacity.

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From my untrained eye, the capacity of our electrical room suggests that perhaps another

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4 to 5 people could install a 40 amp charger before something else has to be done.

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There are some chargers available now that can share a set capacity supply, and they

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automatically halve the charging rate between two cars if both are plugged in simultaneously,

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and will provide the full output if only one is plugged in.

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This could potentially double the number of available chargers, at the occasional expense

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of speed.

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For the record, I will totally let the next person in my building who wants an EV share

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my installation’s supply.

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So person in the spot next to me, let me know.

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Still, 10 chargers in a 57 spot garage is not too impressive.

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I suspect that as EVs become more popular, local utility companies will have to start

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adding infrastructure and coming up with new service schemes in garages and parking lots

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with metered EVSE solutions.

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To be honest, I’m surprised utilities aren’t going hog wild to start these sorts of programs.

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Their product is essentially electricity after all, so why not find new ways to sell it?

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If they built a bank of chargers and arranged a way for the owner of a particular car to

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be billed for their usage, that’s just more money for them.

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But I digress.

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Reimbursing the association for electricity consumption might require creating a new line-item

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in the budget.

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If residents want to pay for electricity as it’s consumed, as I do, a new source of

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income has appeared.

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Might I suggest coding it as miscellaneous revenue, if such a line-item doesn’t already

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exist, or simply add it to the operational fund since it is in effect a supplemental

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assessment.

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Lastly, anyone worried that the electric bill will go nuts from a unit owner going this

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route, may I suggest you hold your horses.

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Last year, my condo association spent $17,000 on electricity Just for the common elements.

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At the rate I’m going, my car will add less than 2 percent to that amount.

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No big deal.

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I hope you found this video useful, informative, thought provoking, or something along those

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lines.

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I’m a real advocate for electric vehicles for many reasons, and cost is a big one.

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I may have spent $2,500 getting this installed, but I spend much less money on fuel compared

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to my old car (a 36 mpg compact).

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If I don’t change my commute or charging habits, this station will have paid for itself

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in less than 3 years assuming gas stays around $2.50 per gallon.

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And I’ll tell you a neat trick to beating that premium price point of electric cars:

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buy a used one.

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Thanks for watching.