EV Ownership vs Level 1 Charging

Rethinking EV Charging
A commonly held belief by new or prospective EV owners is that purchasing one requires the installation of a “level 2”, or 240 volt, home charger. Sara and Ed chat about recent University of Calgary research that challenges this assumption. They discuss considerations that might go into choosing which option is best for EV owners and people considering EVs, as well as the practical realities when it comes to charging, range anxiety - and pottery kilns.

About Your EvC Co-Hosts:

David Keith is Professor and Founding Faculty Director, Climate Systems Engineering Initiative at the University of Chicago. He is the founder of Carbon Engineering and was formerly a professor at Harvard University and the University of Calgary. He splits his time between Canmore and Chicago.

Sara Hastings-Simon studies energy transitions at the intersection of policy, business, and technology. She’s a policy wonk, a physicist turned management consultant, and a professor at the University of Calgary and Director of the Master of Science in Sustainable Energy Development.

Ed Whittingham is a clean energy policy/finance professional specializing in renewable electricity generation and transmission, carbon capture, carbon removal and low carbon transportation. He is a Public Policy Forum fellow and formerly the executive director of the Pembina Institute, a national clean energy think tank.

Produced by Amit Tandon & Bespoke Podcasts

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Ed Wittingham: Welcome to a bonus episode of Energy vs. Climate. I'm your co host, Ed Whittingham. And today we have a special guest, well known to EvC listeners, because she is none other than our very own Ed Whittingham. Sara Hastings Simon. Over the summer, Sara and I got chatting about some of our recent research, including into EV charging, and we thought to ourselves, why not share the findings of the research through a Q& A between the two of us?

So, here we are. And Sara, I'd say, Welcome to energy versus climate, but it's your show. So that would be really weird. 

[00:00:40] Sara Hastings-Simon: Yeah. And I would say, I don't know, I'm glad to be here. We could do the usual like podcast intro, uh, exchange. 

[00:00:48] Ed Wittingham: That's right. I think, I think we've covered it. So let, let's just. Dive right in and with the basics.

I mentioned that this is a, your research that you and others have conducted into EV charging. And so we're going to talk about level one, level two, and even level three EV charging. Can you off the top explain that for listeners? 

[00:01:06] Sara Hastings-Simon: Definitely. So the different levels refer to charging speeds. And as I'll explain in a minute, there's a little bit of fuzziness sort of in the middle there, but at the two ends, it's very clear.

So level one is EV charging with what you think of as sort of a regular plug, you know, uh, as. socket that you might plug your toaster into. So that's 120 volts. Um, so you can get about a, just over a kilowatt of power, um, out of that. Level three, which is also, uh, sometimes called direct current, fast charging, or fast charging, supercharging.

Um, those are those. Big stations you see, uh, you know, on the side of a highway, um, those have charging rates of, you know, upwards of 50 kilowatts and above, not something you would ever really install in your home. Not even, you know, often, um, uh, they're not even in, in like, say a shopping mall center or something like that.

Um, in between those sits this wide range of level two, and that really ranges anywhere from, um, you know, five to 20 kilowatts. So the charging happens at 240 volts. So again, if we're going back to what we know in the home, that looks like a dryer plug that you can plug something into, um, and that can either be a fixed charger or you can just have kind of a cable with, uh, with a plug on either end, um, and to give a few kind of numbers out there.

So what, what do I mean when I say, you know, five to 20 kilowatts, you think about, uh, uh, electric dryer in your home that you might use to dry your clothes. That's going to draw about 5 kilowatts. So it's that, you know, that 5 kilowatt is pretty much, you know, unless you have a heat pump or something, probably the largest thing that you have in your home.

Um, even if you do actually, as long as you don't have a heat pump with backup heating. Um, and it can go up, you know, even higher than that, kind of to 20, down at that 1. 4, uh, kilowatts. That's really kind of in the noise of other things that you might be doing at home and doesn't stand out. 

[00:02:55] Ed Wittingham: Yeah, because it will come up, are most homes, we'll limit it to Alberta where we are, are most homes, do they come wired with 240 volts, volt outlets?

[00:03:05] Sara Hastings-Simon: So, typically you'll have, you know, probably one say in the laundry room, um, newer homes might have them in the garage if people are thinking about EV chargers, but otherwise you wouldn't have had, had one necessarily installed in the garage. 

[00:03:17] Ed Wittingham: Yeah, uh, by example, uh, the house that I have here in Canmore, it's got a 240 volts, uh, outlet down in the garage, which we use.

My wife, Yuka, uses to fire her kiln when she fires her pottery. Now, let's talk about practical applications. But I guess before we do that, let's back up. Who did you do the research with? And what question did you set out to answer through the research? 

[00:03:40] Sara Hastings-Simon: Sure. So this is, um, some work I did with, uh, Blake Schaefer, who's also a professor at the University of Calgary and a twice, two time Energy vs.

Climate guest. And, uh, Aviv Freed, who was, uh, working with us as a research associate also at the University of Calgary, but is probably better known as the founder and head baker at Sidewalk Citizen Bakery here in Calgary. 

[00:04:02] Ed Wittingham: That's, that's quite the, uh, quite the team to conduct the research. Um, so yeah, what, what question did you set out to answer through it?

[00:04:11] Sara Hastings-Simon: Sure. So our, our overall research question was, uh, well, one way to put it is who is right, Sara or Blake. Um, but the, the more formal version of the research question was, is level one charging sufficient to meet electric vehicle drivers needs? So basically if you, Ed, or, you know, somebody else is going to go purchase an electric car, Do you really need to install a level two charger in your home or can you get by with just, you know, what's probably in your garage already or already, you know, at the side of your house, say, if you don't have a garage, but you have a, um, a driveway in front, you know, we thought this is an interesting question to, to answer because if you look around at sort of the way that people talk about EVs, there's There's somewhat of an implicit assumption that you need to have a level two charger in order to, um, you know, operate an EV sort of conveniently, uh, in your home.

[00:05:05] Ed Wittingham: So I want to probe on that a little bit. Is there evidence of doubt in the market among new or perspective EV owners? Access to only level one charging is suppressing EV sales, and you wanted to test the validity of that doubt, i. e. I don't have a 240 volts outlet in my garage, and therefore I can't get an EV.

The 

[00:05:29] Sara Hastings-Simon: short answer to that is we didn't, we don't have sort of firm evidence of that. We motivated this question, as I said, of, you know, is level one charging sufficient? by basically pointing out that in many cases, you know, when you look in sort of the popular media and other places, you find this like kind of implicit, like, Oh, you're getting an EV.

Therefore you need to get a level two charger. Um, I was joking about, you know, is, is Blake or Sara, right? You know, the two of us had made different choices about what, uh, what chargers to put in our own homes. So I think that's an interesting question that we, you, one could approach with a different different research study, right?

Which would be a sort of like a survey based study of how much does your imagined need for level one charging or level two charging, excuse me, um, prevent you from getting an EV for our purposes. We just sort of said, you know, we think this is out there and we're really going to try to look at is, is it possible to do this for a substantial portion of the population with level one?

[00:06:21] Ed Wittingham: So let's go to the results. You show that a material number of EV owners and as close to 30 percent can meet all their charging needs. just through level one charging. And is this finding, just that one, and we can talk about other findings, but was that finding surprising to you or did it confirm your and your colleagues hypothesis going in?

[00:06:43] Sara Hastings-Simon: So I think we knew that there was going to be some percentage of Uh, vehicles, um, that could have their energy needs met with level one, we didn't really have a good sense of, is it going to be 5 percent or, you know, 30 percent or 50%. So I think it is a little, it was a little bit surprising that it was as large as, as 30 percent across, you know, a sample of, of all drivers with all different types of patterns.

[00:07:09] Ed Wittingham: Sure. And remind us what was, what was your sample size? 

[00:07:12] Sara Hastings-Simon: Sure. So we had, um, real world driving and charging data for 129, uh, battery electric vehicles operating in Calgary, um, over the period of 13 months. So this takes into account, you know, the Calgary winters and potential loss of range. And those drivers had a range of driving patterns.

Obviously they were EV drivers already because they were driving EVs. Um, but their sort of average mileage across. the, the data sample matches pretty well to the average Alberta mileage. So, you know, the, the sample size and kind of the study itself, I would say that the findings shouldn't be interpreted as, okay, this is, you know, exactly the number of drivers that can use level one charging.

It's much more of a, you know, is there a there, there, when we think about a role for level one charging. Or as kind of coming out of the paper, um, I think we've come to appreciate more of the potential for something that you might call, you know, level one plus or low power level to this kind of, you know, maybe you want a little bit more than, uh, than 1.

4, but you don't quite need, you know, five kilowatts. And that has real implications for, uh, homes, for the panels, as well as the broader distribution grid. 

[00:08:24] Ed Wittingham: And so 30%. of respondents said they can fully meet their energy needs just with level one charging. But you've got a mixture of others who are doing a combination of level one charging and then also it sounds like some level three charging as well.

Do you have a sense of why someone say would most of the time charge level one but then sometimes they'd be out charging level three? Is it just because they're on the road and that's the The only charging we have access to. 

[00:08:49] Sara Hastings-Simon: Yeah. So I'll take a step back and just explain sort of what we've, what we did in the, in the study.

So we took real world driving and charging data from EV owners, many of whom do have level two chargers, um, as, as part of their, you know, they have it cause they got one when they got an EV. And so what we did was we took their real actual charging and driving data. And then we ran a sort of, um, modeling exercise where we said, basically, if we took away your level two charger, we didn't do this in real life, but we modeled that if we took away their level two charger, and we basically replaced it with a level one charger, and we had them plug in their vehicle, you know, when they went home, would they be able to meet their energy needs?

Based on the amount of time that that would be plugged in, we set aside the kind of road trip part where they were charging with level three, because we assume that's outside the home. So we found that there was this, you know, 29%, almost 30 percent of people that basically only ever need level one, they're fine, they just plug in and get that that slower charge.

Then for this set of people for whom basically in our model, they ran into a point where, okay, we're You know, we've run out of power. I haven't been able to charge as much as I need for my next trip. We gave them a sort of modeled level three supplementary charge. And the reason that we did that is that one way you could imagine to integrate level one charging and Part of the reason that, you know, when I bought an EV, I decided not to put a level two charger in our home was that you could, you know, it's practical to think about people using a level three charger somewhere in their neighbourhood or nearby as a supplement.

So you might be in that, you know, one in that 30 percent that can get by with a level one charger, but it might be a little worrying, right? And so you would have the ability to essentially, you know, top up at a level three charger, not on a road trip, but just, you know, sort of neighbourhood. on those rare times that you needed it.

And so that allowed us to further segment this group where we say basically 30 percent almost 30 percent can use just level 1 charging and then another on top of that 53 percent um, can use this combination of basically level 1 charging and then occasionally they would go have to go and get a level 3 charge depending on their driving patterns.

[00:10:59] Ed Wittingham: So, I conducted my own very thorough broad based survey of EV owners with 3. And I did that in the hour before we started taping this. And what I found was unanimous agreement with your results. And some, some interesting stats. So, Jason Switzer, we know of the Pipeline, Pipelines and Turbines podcast, says he really only uses level 3 during trips, level 1, which he can charge at 9 kilometres, an hour of recharge is plenty.

And, you know, I heard this stat, you know, most EV drivers are only driving about 30 kilometres a day, they're not driving very much. Um, Justin Fish, a friend and renewables lawyer who lives here in Canmore, talked about his bolt. And his bolt takes 48 hours to charge 350 kilometers. So 12 of those hours, if he's just charging level one overnight, gets him, say the 80 kilometers that he needs to, to get to where he needs to go between Canmore and, and even into Calgary one way.

But the question is, what do you tell owners now? Because there's a whole, and I'll give a shout out to Marla Reynolds, about level two. So it's not a barrier. However, there's this, this major convenience factor to having level two at home. And in fact, Marla Reynolds, who is, uh, leading a startup, former chief of staff to federal environment ministers, and is leading a startup called Charger Ready, that's looking at charging of the structure.

You can have this great analogy. You said most people. People can live fine with a beer fridge sized refrigerator, but having a full sized fridge for your beer is just damn convenient. So I'm going to stop there and just love to get your comments on, on those anecdotes, Sara. 

[00:12:46] Sara Hastings-Simon: Well, lots of thoughts there.

Maybe I'll start with the last one and, and work my way backwards. Um, I think the, The beer fridge is a great analogy in terms of, and this doesn't just apply to, you know, EV charging in the home, but on a lot of topics, frankly, we talk about on EVC, just like how do we right size our equipment for what you need?

And often the really expensive part of building out any system, whether it's EV charging or, you know, beer storage is about those edge cases. So those times where you're going to be traveling a lot in one week, or those times when you have, you know, a bunch of people over, uh, for a party. And there's different ways to approach that but certainly building out a system that kind of is always able to provide that edge case is, you know, generally going to be the most expensive and highest energy demand way of doing so.

So what does that mean when it comes to charging? Certainly there are a number of different ways to achieve that. people for whom, you know, they're really driving quite a bit in a year. Um, and, and that translates to a lot in a day. And, and, you know, frankly, they're going to have a hard time. There was one driver in this sample that we had that, that drove, you know, over 90 kilometers, 90, 000 kilometers a year.

I don't know if it was like an Uber driver or something, but obviously they're going to have a hard time, you know, meeting their charging needs without a level two charger. For those that, that are not driving as far though, as you said, I think in general, we tend to actually overestimate, um, how much we drive on a daily basis.

A lot of vehicles are actually able to kind of meet that average daily mileage, uh, energy requirements with that level one. And the, the sort of edge case, then one way to deal with that is to have access to, you know, in, in your beer analogy, it would be like a communal beer fridge that you can go and, you know, borrow or store your beer in for those.

Uh, those couple of times. So why might you want to do that? You know, sure, it's definitely less convenient, right? I mean, if you have it in your home, whether it's a charger or the fridge, it's, you know, definitely going to be easier to do. But it's really a question then of like cost versus convenience trade off.

And we can talk more about that, but those faster chargers, they certainly can come at a cost to the individual homeowner, whether that's just the cost of the charger itself. of potentially having to upgrade your panel or, you know, upgrade the service to your panel. And then of course, there's also a cost on the grid side.

The other thing is that that came out of this research for me is really this idea of like, well, if 1. 4 kilowatts isn't quite enough. If the level one charging isn't quite enough, maybe we should be encouraging people to put in level two chargers that are, you know, just, just double that, just the 2. 8 kilowatts electrically.

That's actually simpler to do. Um, so I'm told I'm not a, not an electrician. So ask your, ask your electrician. This is not official advice, but that might be sort of a sweet spot that, you know, gives you enough of that flexibility, but doesn't start to require, uh, infrastructure upgrades in the same way.

And coming back to your, you know, your N of three, uh, as a, as a study reviewer, I would say, I, I feel like you need a slightly bigger sample size. Um, but I do think it is a, a good reminder for folks that, you know, might be thinking, Oh, you know, could this work for me? Um, or I wanted to get an EV, but like, there's no way I can upgrade my panel in my home to realize, Hey, this might actually be an option.

It might be something I should at least look into, uh, if it could work for me. 

[00:16:06] Ed Wittingham: Yeah, well, I personally think my end of three is very scientifically valid, and especially it's amazing what you can do by text with an hour before recording. I will say, by the way, the beer analogy, the keen EVC listener will remember that we regularly use beers.

as analogies to make points as we did with our carbon offset show. And sometimes we produce beers or work with breweries to produce beers. And I'll just say, watch this space. We'll leave it at that as a little teaser, but coming back to level one, level two, and then I want to draw out implications for current or potential EV owners.

And then as we always do talk about grid managers and policymakers, tell us, is there a time of day advantage available in Canada, in Alberta? For instance, there's actually an advantage in a might that time of day, maybe it doesn't You know, get you over the hurdle to upgrade your panel because that's a few thousand bucks, but you're not upgrading your panel.

You're just putting in a 240 volt. If I charge at a certain limited time per day, I'm incentivized by my utility to do that versus running all day when, you know, crossing over that all day, you're going to be buying electricity at the most expensive times. 

[00:17:18] Sara Hastings-Simon: Yeah. So you hit exactly on sort of one of the trade offs, obviously from the distribution grid.

So the kind of local wires, the transformer that sits by your home and the panel in your home, it's better to smooth out that demand and charge at lower levels. From a grid perspective, there may well be times like the middle of a sunny day in Alberta, when there's a lot of excess power available at relatively low cost, and you would actually want to have faster chargers so that you can shift more of your demand there.

And so there is, you know, with this level one charging, as with many things in energy transition, there is a trade off, right? So one shouldn't over interpret these results to say, well, you know, we should never let people do level two charging, level two charging is always. is always bad. No, it's really more saying there may be some cases where level one charging makes more sense, but we should look at the trade offs between being able to have less of that, you know, local infrastructure needs versus giving up the ability to do some of that.

time shifting to say, middle of the day. Um, and so I think, you know, this is actually some work that we're, we're trying to look at now. I think it's also going to depend very much on the details of where you are, but there, there may be some, um, cases where, you know, level one makes sense or more sense or level two.

The other thing that we didn't, uh, really emphasize in the paper, but I think it's also valid is that you think about something like a workplace. And there's often a lot of focus on retrofitting level two chargers in the workplace. And maybe in some cases, it might make sense to rather than having a few level two chargers to actually put level one charging at all the stalls.

And so my favorite example of, you know, where that would make a lot of sense, or the dumbest place that you can possibly install a level two charger is the long term parking lot at the airport, where by definition, everybody is Spending at least, you know, what is it, 48 hours there, you know, enough time that any EV can charge fully with level one.

And yet, rather than putting level one at a bunch of spots, they have a few number of spots with level two. So what we're sort of trying to do with this research and the results is is not say, you know, level two charging is bad and we shouldn't do it, but rather, hey, maybe we should be a little more thoughtful about where level one makes sense.

And also, if people don't have the ability to do level two, they might consider if they can still have an EV work for them. 

[00:19:34] Ed Wittingham: Yeah. And it's, it's an interesting challenge for policymakers. Anything to do with electricity is a challenge for policymakers. Because on one hand, with people using level one instead of level two, it, correct me if I'm wrong, it could lessen loads per household compared to level two charging because you're spreading out that charging over long, longer periods.

But if we have that brings more EV owners into the market, sorry, more people buying EVs and they're coming home and they're charging at the same time when they get home, then you're increasing overall neighborhood loads on an absolute basis. creates the same problem. 

[00:20:10] Sara Hastings-Simon: Yeah, and that gets to some work actually that I think just recently came out that Blake Schaefer did with some other colleagues looking at kind of how you manage these potential spikes in demand and the importance of really starting to think more about ways to spread out that demand, particularly if people are installing very fast level two chargers, right?

And that comes back again to the first point, which is, it just is, it makes it that much harder if you're asking. distribution utility operators to integrate, um, level two chargers, you know, that might be six, eight, 10 kilowatts. That's really a lot more than the, the size of equipment that they're sort of historically have had to deal with.

Um, and so, you know, certainly I think whether it's level one or level two, there's a lot more that can be done. Certainly it does seem to make sense to, to incentivize or encourage people not to put in really, as my kids would say, overpowered, OP, uh, level two chargers. 

[00:21:08] Ed Wittingham: Yes, as they would say. So what does this all mean?

You know, if you boil it down to a potential EV owner like myself, and I'm someone, I surf the back of the wave, I'm not, I'm the opposite of an early adopter, typically, uh, one of those households, we know our next vehicle, whether new or used will be an EV and, you know, I'm mulling my big decision and Sara, I'm going to use my Bitcoin proceeds, you know, from that strategic investment I made before a crypto versus climate episode.

Cause. I'm in the money now from that investment, you know, you could have got in while the going was good, but you poo pooed it. And now I'm in the money. So I'm going to plug that into part of the pun, my EV purchase. So what should I take from this? And, and as someone who already has infrastructure for a level two, uh, charging, you know, Fortunately, in this garage, I just have to, you know, tell Yuka not to fire her kiln on certain days.

[00:22:01] Sara Hastings-Simon: So, I mean, I think a couple of things, you know, certainly as someone who has the ability to install a level two, there's, you know, there may still be that some cost that comes with it. Although I think some of the newer EVs are actually just coming with the cables you can, you can plug directly in. Um, so, you know, I think if you want to be a good grid citizen, um, you should take a serious look at your driving needs.

And, and think before you put in a, you know, very high powered level two charger. Is this really something that I need or can I get by with a bit less? If you didn't already have that 240 volt in your garage, I would say, you know, definitely look at your driving habits. And, and maybe even decide to sort of get an EV and see how it goes with the plan to use the level three if you need to, uh, to supplement that before you go ahead and get a level two.

Or if you, you know, really want an EV and you don't have the ability to, uh, to put a level two charger, um, you know, don't despair, don't completely give up. See if, if level one is an option. And if you have some level three charging available near you, I think it's the one thing that's challenging about this is it's really.

Giving or sort of asking people to kind of process even more information when they're thinking about purchasing an EV. So I do think that there is a role in here for, um, more education in terms of, you know, whether that's the EV dealers or potential utilities coming in and saying, Hey, there's, You know, a role for, um, this, this lower powered charging, certainly also managed charging is another piece of that as well, too.

So some, some policy elements that still need to come in there as well. Um, but at a high level, I'd say, you know, if you're, if you're an EV interested person, don't let the inability to install a level to prevent you from moving forward. And think seriously before you get a really high powered one or before you spend, you know, any chunk of money on, on putting one in, if it's something that you really need.

[00:24:01] Ed Wittingham: And I'd add to that, I'll tell a quick story. Don't let the assumption that it's a small town and therefore won't have, say, level two or higher charging infrastructure get in the way. And I say that because Marlowe, who I'd mentioned is, is. Part of the N of three, one of the N of three, uh, we went and we paddled the upper Red Deer River, this great class of whitewater, uh, in Alberta in early July.

He's got a new Rivian truck, an EV truck. And we're looking at, it's got about 500 kilometers of range, but we realized we need to do a little bit of top up. I am using the Universal We. Marla did all the calculating. Called and found in Sundry, Alberta, that there is a Dairy Queen with a Tesla charger in the back parking lot because the Dairy Queen owner is a Tesla owner, installed it, and said, come by and use it.

Just come in and buy some blizzards, which is exactly what we did after a successful paddle and that little top up. We thought it probably wasn't necessary, but it just gave us. The peace of mind and it led to delicious blizzards after a paddle. So there you go. It's out there. It's happening folks. And Sara, thanks for this.

It's nice to really look at EVs really from the home, the perspective of, of home based charging, which we haven't done. Um, this is the time when I thank you as a guest for coming on the show, but again, it's your show. So that would just be even weirder. 

[00:25:27] Sara Hastings-Simon: So then I will, I will not thank you for having me, but I'll say it is.

It was fun to chat about this and it's always fun to, you know, talk about the research that you've been doing. Um, especially when, you know, when you get to the chance to do that. to work with the great research associates like Aviv, who, uh, you know, was doing all that. As you said, in the, in the, we did this, uh, it's often they are the ones who are the we of actually doing that modeling and that calculation.

So big thanks to Aviv. 

[00:25:52] Ed Wittingham: Thanks for listening to Energy Versus Climate. The show is created by David Keith, Sara Hastings Simon, and me, Ed Whittingham. And produced by Amit Tandon, with help from Crystal Hickey. Our title and show music is The Wind Up by Brian Lipps. This season of Energy vs. Climate is produced with support from the University of Calgary's Office of the Vice President of Research and the University's Global Research Initiative.

Further support comes from the Troche Family Foundation, the North Family Foundation, the Palmer Family Foundation, and our generous listeners. Sign up for updates and exclusive webinar access at energyvsclimate.com and review and rate us on your favorite podcast platform. This helps new listeners to find the show.

With this show obviously being the exception, Sara's out of commission for the time being due to her recent breast cancer diagnosis. We ABC as soon as she's able to be back. In the meantime, David and I will be back. back with a special live taping of Energy vs. Climate that we made at the Energy Disruptors Conference in Calgary.

We'll see you then.