Love the way the multiple charges are able to throttle based on the amount of energy depending on the amount of cars charging. Thats the innovation we needed to pave the way for mass adoption. I love his point about install the chargers first so that more people will by EV's instead of waiting for people to buy the EV's and then planning to install a charger on a resident by resident basis.
This is exactly what is needed and should pop up at many different types of destinations. DCFC should be on and off highways and occasionally along major roads.
I've been L1 charging at my condo parking stall for nearly 5 years! 110V@10amps gives me 8 to 12kwh into the car every night, which provides me with all the range needed for my daily drive.
Just actually did the calculation this would be pushing it but possibly doable for me driving 300-400miles a week. But it was only 300 to install a 14-50 plug so not necessarily an insane cost. GIves me more options like limiting to when the sun is the best instead of selling electricity at 2 cents and buying it back at 16...
I used level 1 charging when I had a plug in hybrid. For a typical daily drive with a midsize sedan, it's enough. But if running conduit anew, level 2 (220V) generally makes more sense, as the video says.
This is a great topic, largely ignored by many in the EV space. Lots of cities have a majority of their housing in multifamily, and solutions like this are a necessity for those locations.
This is exactly what's needed to help build the infostructure that everyone who doesn't have an EV complains about. This is most diffidently assist is moving more people over to EV, I am very excited for that. I can't wait for this product to start being put out in the Chicagoland Area!
We miss Liv but you did a great job Patrick! I had never heard of this technology but it is a great idea. I have been in situations at work where each person would have to unplug after their car finished charging. There were only a few people with EVs working there so we mostly knew each other but we would still have to periodically track down a person when their car finished charging. Back then, a lot of people had Leafs and many could not do a round trip so it could get stressful especially if someone we didn't know left their car in the way.
I was looking into Orange Chargers’ similar plug-only offering, but they do not have the load balancing capability which is great. Employers should install this for at-work charging at minimal cost (not even electricity). They could install these in banks of 10 as usage grew. There is no excuse now for climate change-conscious employers not to do this.
I live in a condo, my parking spot is 150 ft away from my unit. I have it wired to my unit’s individual panel. The condo board has approved this for several units
We have two chargers at home for our two EVs and PHEV, but this is a great idea. The two things I'm concerned about both revolve around safety/theft: 1. What happens if someone unplugs your EVSE and plugs their own in? Hopefully, there's an immediate cut in the power and a requirement that you authenticate with the app to get power flowing again. 2. At my house, we have one hard-wired EVSE and one NEMA 14-50 outlet. For the 14-50, there's a lock cover on it. You could easily cut the lock with a pair of bolt cutters, but it's one more deterrent for the 15 year old kid passing by who just wants to cause mischief. I'd love these boxes to have covers that can be locked with a padlock that has a pin code. That wouldn't add more than $10 to the price of each station. People need to think differently about EVs. As was mentioned in the video, who cares how long it takes to charge if you come out in the morning and it's ready to go? I frequent three states and I've only used public charging twice. Once because I just wanted to know what it was like and I didn't need it and the second time because I was dropping my wife and her sister off at the mall and was going to watch Netflix in my Tesla anyway, so I figured why not top off?
As the installers stated, the box must be scanned and your car is registered. It is using a handshake that reads your vehicles vin during that process...just like Tesla's do at their public chargers. Additionally, if your car is locked the charging cable is also locked. They can unplug the charger from the wall just not the cable from the car. Either way no random driver can come by and get power. .
Great video, very cool product. My concern, though, is the NEMA 14-50 outlet being plugged and unplugged every day. The plug is a tension/friction based connector which will degrade over time unlike say a J1772 plug which uses a latch. This is a concern since the failure mode of the 14-50 plug will result in a looser connection which eventually results in arcing, which results in fires. Does the Pando unit have any kind of internal monitoring of like cycles or temperature in order to say "Hey this plug is worn out, I won't fire up anymore until you replace the plug."?
This is awesome. I was thinking this would be great for hotels, then got to the 23 minute mark and saw Patrick had the same thought. I wonder how these units connect to the internet to report billing? Mesh network nodes in each plug? Power line internet? I looked on their web site but didn’t find it.
Right now its wifi, but very soon they will work with no connectivity required! All the same features plus we added a bunch more! Keep your eyes open for an announcement very soon!
This is amazing. Devil's advocate though, what's the plug/unplug durability of the outlet? I like some of the other companies that are doing a similar thing, but just making the outlet a female J1772. Pros would be the outlet could communicate to the cars (so PHEVs that don't need 40 amps/9.6kW, the outlet is aware). Cons, not a lot of people have that type of cable (easy to purchase though). A 14-50 has to be able to provide 40 amps constantly, regardless of load requirement. Still, if these work better economically then I would definitely use it.
At 11:56 Patrick, you had an example of 60 miles and 20 kWh which all sounded good however you said you could get that in an hour. That was not happening unless you had an onboard 20 kW charger like the Ford F150 lightning and had an 80 amp circuit with a hardwired charger. Your example would take two hours which is still reasonable.
Great idea. The only negative I see is the add property value to the development. That means that the local government will raise property taxes for the development. There should be legislation that prohibits that.
Condo prices are so volatile it is difficult to map to one specific factor. We have Prop 13 in California, so tax increases are capped unless there is a change in ownership.
This is awesome to see. This works well with parking garages and assigned spots. I also believe this would work with unassigned spot on a first come first serve basis but simply having enough sports for every EV owner. My question then would be, in an unassigned situation how would you combat "icing" where a gas car driver wouldn't care as long as it's an available spot. I guess in an HOA situation they wouldn't take kindly to having their car towed or getting a fine bill in their mailbox from the HOA. So that might crack down on that. But now I'm curious how something thing like this could work in those apartment complexes where it's just a parking lot that's uncovered and unassigned. Another thing I'm concerned about is someone coming along and unplugging your EVSE or potentially stealing it. But I gues that's just the risk one will have to take. All in all this is a really good solution.
Good solution for condos with parking garages! Just BYO (bring your own) universal mobile connector (UMC) to use with 14-50 outlets. That's also a clever way to distribute the power among various EVs, depending upon how much the need and when they plug in. Curious to know what Panda would charge per kWh.
I live at a condo and manage our EVSE. I set the rate to make sure EV drivers fully fund electricity used. The big challenge is our circuit is shared with swimming pool and club house which having varying demand fees. Some months it’s 13 cents and others are 19 cents.
Great video. I would have liked to hear more about the nerdy side of things. Like how much power is allocated to the plugs. How many cars could charge at one time etc. and an average of what the residents are paying per kWh. I realize that’s going to be different around the country but I find all that stuff intriguing.
The breakers are 40amp, so 32amp charging. 4 to 1 parking spots to breaker max, House power is max $0.52/kwh, dropping next week as we move to the winter rates - exploring a couple of ways to reduce it.
@@tomherbstwow .52 cents! California is proud of their electricity. Sucks it’s that much. I’m almost embarrassed to say that my rates are .14 during the day .10 cents mornings and later evenings and off peak 11p-6a is .07 kWh. Hopefully they can get it down some. Good luck. 👍
@@tomherbst I was wondering if you put in 30 chargers and there are 90 parking spaces total? Wasn't quite clear from the video. If so, how do you manage who gets to use the chargers if all the parking spaces are deeded?
Cool solution, my building is in the middle of adding chargers to give us what we believe to be the most EV charging capacity in Austin (250+ of the 400 spots) but it’s been very time consuming and complex to get it rolling. Took months to get it approved by the HOA and it’s been 4 months waiting for permits, hopefully it gets approved soon as mine is in the list waiting for it 😅. We were fortunate to not need extra supply capacity due to having a massive 3 phase supply capacity just needed more panel space to allow the circuits. This would be a solid solution for buildings that don’t have the power supply available or don’t have the capital improvement funds to do an unlimited install as it was almost a quarter million dollars not counting the individual spot installs.
@@MachE_VLOG yeah, my understanding is it would support up to 60 AMP for each one though I doubt most would do that. Most seem to install NEMA 14-50s based on the existing installs. We were very lucky our board almost all drives EVs so it was mostly gathering data for the rest of the community to prove that it was in fact a smart project.
@@johnpoldo8817 I wish we had the EVs to go along with the charging capability.i think we’re at probably 20% of vehicles in our garage, but it’s already noticeably accelerated after this project was given the green light. I know of 2 other people including myself who bought an EV shortly after the vote passed and about 10 others that plan to next time they purchase. I wish I knew all the details, it was already underway by the time I found out about it and started helping to try to push it along.
@@johndavis7257 A 20% adoption rate for Texas is very high. This must be a very upscale building. Our southern condo only has 6% adoption, but higher value northern space has nearly 25% adoption.
I'm waiting for San Francisco to come up with an incentive program similar to the one mentioned here by Peninsula Clean Energy so I can get my building setup like this.🤞 Did they say that they have 90 parking spaces onsite and 30 chargers were installed? Did I hear that correctly? If the spaces are deeded to the units how do they decide who gets to use which chargers? I ask because my building has deeded spaces and the current incentive program for multifamily charging in SF is not enough to cover the cost to install a charger in every parking space plus necessary infrastructure upgrades. Just curious what other people are doing to manage this type of install. Thanks!
@@NagleessI've already spoken with Pando extensively. The current SF incentive programs available for my property don't cover enough of the cost for the project to pencil out.
@@Nagleess The SF program maxes out at $100k per property. At $3k a pop, that's 33 chargers, minus whatever infrastructure upgrades cost. Nowhere near enough to cover all the users who need a charger. That's why my first comment is asking if they installed 30 chargers in a 90 space parking situation? And if so, how they manage who gets to use them if all the parking spaces are deeded?
Charging is pretty good and consistent with Tesla. What is hurting with adoption is the other cars, some of them are pretty horrible. Once the NACS standard is 100% implemented that should solve a lot of those problems.
Considering Out of Spec's reporting on the current situation with public charging in San Fransisco, It would been very interesting if they would have launched in the place where there is a highly demonstrated need for such a solution. If they tried and were denied the ability by either HOA's or City regulation an thus defaulted to the East Palo Alto location that would **VERY** interesting to learn. :)
I don't think they decided to do East Palo Alto over San Francisco, I happened to have a project to look at EV charging in this complex when they came out with their product. I have talked to people in San Francisco who are considering this solution now.
This is private use charging, not public charging. The property owners are the ones who decide what to install. Cost is a huge factor, and installations in multifamily properties can get quite complicated depending on a number of factors. Palo Alto has some charger installation rebates that help offset the cost, which this project used, it was mentioned in this video (Peninsula Clean Energy). SF is just beginning to offer rebates but not enough to cover the full cost for my property, for example. Even if the HOA allows it, the homeowner still has to pay for it.
@@lemongavine Actually, some cars lock better than others. My wife's Pacifica doesn't seem to lock at all, but my Model 3 locks well. I am investigating having anchor bolts installed so residents can lock their EVSE to it.
If these are assigned parking stalls to specific units, I’m confused about this whole payment thing. Why not just tie the circuit of the unit stalls into the units electrical panel? That’s how our 110 units are done up here in Canada for a block heater cords. You have a switch in your unit to turn it off so nobody steals your power.
It is designed for maximum flexibility. At this location, parking is assigned to the unit. But this system is deployable to other locations without assigned parking.
It would not be possible to route the power to the outlets in the garage through the panels in the condos. There is a wall of dense packed condo meters in the electric room, but that is the only access to unit power in the electric room. No space to tap into it at all, especially with appropriate breakers and such.
I think this is a great stopgap solution. Sure in 25 years when 3/4 of the vehicles are EV, it’s not going to work, but in 25 years the system will be need replacing anyway. unfortunately, most states don’t have right to charge laws so this isn’t even on anyone’s radar. It took 2 1/2 years to make it happen with right to charge laws already on the books. That means most states aren’t going to see anything like this till well past 2035.
The reason it took so long is that none of alternatives I found fit the requirements and the budget. We moved pretty quickly once we found this option.
The whole idea is that one gets installed in every parking space and there's enough power provisioned in the building to support everyone charging at the same time.
@@tomherbst Tom, make sure you cover transaction, communications, and service fees. Often there's a credit card processing fee or cellular fee. I'm a Charge Point Operator at a condominium builidng in Florida and I make certain the condo association is fully reimbursed for all fees so ICE vehicle drivers are not subsidizing it.
@@usflin Correct me if wrong, but doesn't the HOA host set pricing because he must pay utility bill plus payment system fee charged by Pando. The utility sets lowest cost for garage power, probably ignoring EVs. This is how my condo charger works.
Put two Chargers in the most inconvenient farthest away guest parking place, some place no one will take it unless they really need it. Weather for power or just park.
This looks like a good cheap solution, feel free to comment on my videos too. Here is what we did in our previous condo, definitely more expensive though: CAN YOU HAVE HOME CHARGING IN A CONDO? UNICO POWER th-cam.com/video/v1oSRnyIvws/w-d-xo.html And here is what we did just last year in our house: CAN YOU GO 100% ELECTRIC WITH A 100 AMP PANEL? th-cam.com/video/paU98Z4MuKs/w-d-xo.html
Tesla Wall Connectors have had this feature since forever. It's call Group Power Management which shares the total load allocated such as via a sub panel. For example if there is a 120 amp sub panel then 2 cars are charging they can each charge at full 60 amps (48 actual), if 4 cars are charging they can each charge at 30 amps (24 actual), etc. etc, even with 8 cars charging at the same time you still get 15 amp (12 actual). And it dynamically manages the power so if one is done it will up the amps for the rest. Not every car that is plugged in will be charging all the time and at the same time. Note these are all for Level 2 at 240 volts.
@@MachE_VLOG Don't get me wrong, this is an interesting solution for sure. The big question is how many amps in total and will it balance the amps so people aren't left out or down the queue with zero charge until it eventually gets to them. That is dynamically share the power to those that are needing it versus only charging at full (40 amp for 14-50) rate for a few leaving others at zero. Also, a company like this needs to get in contact with power companies to partner a solution. For example, FPL (in Florida) has an absolute bargain of a charging program where they also supply the wall connector equipment but only for single family homes. A solution like this might be something FPL would be interested in partnering with if they are not working on their own solution (they didn't make their own wall connectors for single family homes, they partnered with an wall connector company). Other questions are did the condo in the video have to put in a new service meter just for these connector outlets? Lots of questions. This could very well be a fantastic solution. I 1,000% agree that ideally each space has its own connector versus just a few shared use ones. For example, people that are seasonal residents only would want to plug in for the 6 months they are away so they get a trickle charge for the phantom drain.
@@danfoley1429 It will need to be monitored so that people are always able to charge in the time they need it. With the current number of EV's in the complex, I think there will not be any contention or delay.
I live in apartments and drove an EV for 5yrs they dropped the ball about putting in charging !! 😢 older building and middle of no where assigned parking spots ! So I make things work!
Thank you, Patrick for this video. I have also been considering a solution for a multi family dwelling. The issue I have with the solution is: 1. As was stated, the need for a dumb charger. 2. The need for protected parking that one could trust their EVSE to be sitting in. This would not work in carports in a non-gated community. 3. I don’t understand how they have any guarantees of charging in the evening if they have limited power and 30 of these plugs set up as he stated, I would think there would be times where some folks would never get turned on. Maybe they do a one hour max and then rotate around so that everybody gets a little, that no doubt causes lots of alerts on your vehicle application. 4. I would think the best solution though more expensive would be to have a cordless EVSE. The advantage of this is that power levels can be adjusted incrementally to deal with load and the cord unplug would be owned by the end user, thus avoiding a wear item. Though having user-owned cords is only common in Europe, it is starting in the US now with so much copper thievery.
Wireless only solves security because there’s nothing to steal. You can vary supply power very easily on a wired system. Hopefully, when all plugs are in use, the system rolls back power to a safe level. This is very easy to do in software.
@@lrvman It definitely can. Property owners are more likely to install something like this than expensive chargers they have to maintain. This is a great solution for apartments. As more people buy EVs, apartment owners will be under more pressure to have charging options.
Interesting view point i guess I don't get where you get the idea if I knew how to show her I would not sure why she would be upset and other maybe easier options given her struggles with getti g charging installed at her MUD thought this sounded perfect
I've watched her series about getting installs at her property. Her property requires a more complex setup. Running power to every parking space, and provisioning enough power for every parking space to charge at the same time, adds to the cost of the install. The cost of the device is just a small piece. She's relying partly on city subsidies for her project. Her city's subsidy program is structured differently than the Palo Alto one discussed in this video. The reason this property went through with this project was because Peninsula Clean Energy paid for most of it.
@@usflin Thanks for explanation. Obviously, she made the project much too complex with everyone being able to charge at the same time with full power. Why didn't she consider load balancing so less power was needed? Make residents use off-peak time and charge to replace only what was used. Making the project utopia has caused major delays so currently everyone has nothing. I'd much rather have a working charger today, slightly imperfect, than nothing at all. How about you?
Love the way the multiple charges are able to throttle based on the amount of energy depending on the amount of cars charging. Thats the innovation we needed to pave the way for mass adoption. I love his point about install the chargers first so that more people will by EV's instead of waiting for people to buy the EV's and then planning to install a charger on a resident by resident basis.
Excellent video. Nearly half of US population lives in apartments, HOA’s, and condos and most have no EV charging.
Thank you both for coming out and taking a look at this amazing project! We can't wait to show you what we have in store for the future very soon ;)
This is exactly what is needed and should pop up at many different types of destinations.
DCFC should be on and off highways and occasionally along major roads.
@nagleess If you're ever looking to grow out in the SE, I'd love to be a part of it.
Airport parking needs these
This charger set up is amazing. If I lived in a condo I’d definitely be lobbying for it.
Thank You Everybody for All that you are doing for our Planet Earth.... Peace.. Shalom.. Salam.. Namaste ... 🙏🏻 😊 ✌ ☮ ❤
I've been L1 charging at my condo parking stall for nearly 5 years! 110V@10amps gives me 8 to 12kwh into the car every night, which provides me with all the range needed for my daily drive.
Just actually did the calculation this would be pushing it but possibly doable for me driving 300-400miles a week. But it was only 300 to install a 14-50 plug so not necessarily an insane cost. GIves me more options like limiting to when the sun is the best instead of selling electricity at 2 cents and buying it back at 16...
@@ewitte12 It would have cost me at least 3 grand to install a NEMA 14-50 in my condo parking stall.
I used level 1 charging when I had a plug in hybrid. For a typical daily drive with a midsize sedan, it's enough. But if running conduit anew, level 2 (220V) generally makes more sense, as the video says.
What a great idea!! I will suggest this to my condo mgmt.
Such a simple but great solution! We need them in our apartment complex in Austin.
Perfect solution for hospitals as well
This is a great topic, largely ignored by many in the EV space. Lots of cities have a majority of their housing in multifamily, and solutions like this are a necessity for those locations.
We are SO excited to share about this and we will be doing more! Solutions like this are essential - Liv
@@MachE_VLOG Totally agree
This is exactly what's needed to help build the infostructure that everyone who doesn't have an EV complains about. This is most diffidently assist is moving more people over to EV, I am very excited for that. I can't wait for this product to start being put out in the Chicagoland Area!
We miss Liv but you did a great job Patrick!
I had never heard of this technology but it is a great idea. I have been in situations at work where each person would have to unplug after their car finished charging. There were only a few people with EVs working there so we mostly knew each other but we would still have to periodically track down a person when their car finished charging. Back then, a lot of people had Leafs and many could not do a round trip so it could get stressful especially if someone we didn't know left their car in the way.
I was looking into Orange Chargers’ similar plug-only offering, but they do not have the load balancing capability which is great. Employers should install this for at-work charging at minimal cost (not even electricity). They could install these in banks of 10 as usage grew. There is no excuse now for climate change-conscious employers not to do this.
Love this! Heard about the company via the Grid Connections podcast so seeing it in action not long after that is much appreciated 👍
You guys should totally have them on for a chat! - Liv
I live in a condo, my parking spot is 150 ft away from my unit. I have it wired to my unit’s individual panel. The condo board has approved this for several units
What did electrician charge for running 150 ft of cable in weatherproof conduit? Sounds expensive.
We have two chargers at home for our two EVs and PHEV, but this is a great idea. The two things I'm concerned about both revolve around safety/theft:
1. What happens if someone unplugs your EVSE and plugs their own in? Hopefully, there's an immediate cut in the power and a requirement that you authenticate with the app to get power flowing again.
2. At my house, we have one hard-wired EVSE and one NEMA 14-50 outlet. For the 14-50, there's a lock cover on it. You could easily cut the lock with a pair of bolt cutters, but it's one more deterrent for the 15 year old kid passing by who just wants to cause mischief. I'd love these boxes to have covers that can be locked with a padlock that has a pin code. That wouldn't add more than $10 to the price of each station.
People need to think differently about EVs. As was mentioned in the video, who cares how long it takes to charge if you come out in the morning and it's ready to go? I frequent three states and I've only used public charging twice. Once because I just wanted to know what it was like and I didn't need it and the second time because I was dropping my wife and her sister off at the mall and was going to watch Netflix in my Tesla anyway, so I figured why not top off?
As the installers stated, the box must be scanned and your car is registered. It is using a handshake that reads your vehicles vin during that process...just like Tesla's do at their public chargers. Additionally, if your car is locked the charging cable is also locked. They can unplug the charger from the wall just not the cable from the car. Either way no random driver can come by and get power.
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Great video, very cool product. My concern, though, is the NEMA 14-50 outlet being plugged and unplugged every day. The plug is a tension/friction based connector which will degrade over time unlike say a J1772 plug which uses a latch. This is a concern since the failure mode of the 14-50 plug will result in a looser connection which eventually results in arcing, which results in fires. Does the Pando unit have any kind of internal monitoring of like cycles or temperature in order to say "Hey this plug is worn out, I won't fire up anymore until you replace the plug."?
It's also hanging off the ground 😅
I asked about this - they claim a duty cycle of 5000 socket plugins.
This is awesome. I was thinking this would be great for hotels, then got to the 23 minute mark and saw Patrick had the same thought. I wonder how these units connect to the internet to report billing? Mesh network nodes in each plug? Power line internet? I looked on their web site but didn’t find it.
Right now its wifi, but very soon they will work with no connectivity required! All the same features plus we added a bunch more! Keep your eyes open for an announcement very soon!
This is amazing. Devil's advocate though, what's the plug/unplug durability of the outlet? I like some of the other companies that are doing a similar thing, but just making the outlet a female J1772. Pros would be the outlet could communicate to the cars (so PHEVs that don't need 40 amps/9.6kW, the outlet is aware). Cons, not a lot of people have that type of cable (easy to purchase though). A 14-50 has to be able to provide 40 amps constantly, regardless of load requirement. Still, if these work better economically then I would definitely use it.
They claim 5000 cycles for plugins. We are allowing 32amps for charging, it will disconnect if it draws more than 32amps.
@@tomherbst Actually we just upped that claim to 15,000 cycles!
Fantastic video and an awesome solution!
At 11:56 Patrick, you had an example of 60 miles and 20 kWh which all sounded good however you said you could get that in an hour. That was not happening unless you had an onboard 20 kW charger like the Ford F150 lightning and had an 80 amp circuit with a hardwired charger. Your example would take two hours which is still reasonable.
10 states have right to charge laws
Thank y'all for this content. Stay safe in all these wildfires in SoCal please!!
Very cool solution...
Looks like a nice product!
Great idea. The only negative I see is the add property value to the development. That means that the local government will raise property taxes for the development. There should be legislation that prohibits that.
Condo prices are so volatile it is difficult to map to one specific factor. We have Prop 13 in California, so tax increases are capped unless there is a change in ownership.
This is awesome to see. This works well with parking garages and assigned spots. I also believe this would work with unassigned spot on a first come first serve basis but simply having enough sports for every EV owner.
My question then would be, in an unassigned situation how would you combat "icing" where a gas car driver wouldn't care as long as it's an available spot. I guess in an HOA situation they wouldn't take kindly to having their car towed or getting a fine bill in their mailbox from the HOA. So that might crack down on that.
But now I'm curious how something thing like this could work in those apartment complexes where it's just a parking lot that's uncovered and unassigned. Another thing I'm concerned about is someone coming along and unplugging your EVSE or potentially stealing it. But I gues that's just the risk one will have to take.
All in all this is a really good solution.
Good solution for condos with parking garages! Just BYO (bring your own) universal mobile connector (UMC) to use with 14-50 outlets. That's also a clever way to distribute the power among various EVs, depending upon how much the need and when they plug in. Curious to know what Panda would charge per kWh.
Pando doesn't set the rate. It's up to the building property owner to set that. - Liv
I live at a condo and manage our EVSE. I set the rate to make sure EV drivers fully fund electricity used. The big challenge is our circuit is shared with swimming pool and club house which having varying demand fees. Some months it’s 13 cents and others are 19 cents.
Just doing passthrough of the utility rate at first - looking at ways to reduce the rate in the future.
Great video. I would have liked to hear more about the nerdy side of things. Like how much power is allocated to the plugs. How many cars could charge at one time etc. and an average of what the residents are paying per kWh. I realize that’s going to be different around the country but I find all that stuff intriguing.
Perhaps we will have to go more in depth with them in the future! - Liv
The breakers are 40amp, so 32amp charging. 4 to 1 parking spots to breaker max, House power is max $0.52/kwh, dropping next week as we move to the winter rates - exploring a couple of ways to reduce it.
@@tomherbstwow .52 cents! California is proud of their electricity. Sucks it’s that much. I’m almost embarrassed to say that my rates are .14 during the day .10 cents mornings and later evenings and off peak 11p-6a is .07 kWh. Hopefully they can get it down some. Good luck. 👍
@@Astrand1 I'm trying to get us qualified for some better rates, but hoops to jump through.
@@tomherbst I was wondering if you put in 30 chargers and there are 90 parking spaces total? Wasn't quite clear from the video. If so, how do you manage who gets to use the chargers if all the parking spaces are deeded?
If you build it, they will come
Great to hear Panda is working on solutions for apartments and businesses.
Cool solution, my building is in the middle of adding chargers to give us what we believe to be the most EV charging capacity in Austin (250+ of the 400 spots) but it’s been very time consuming and complex to get it rolling. Took months to get it approved by the HOA and it’s been 4 months waiting for permits, hopefully it gets approved soon as mine is in the list waiting for it 😅. We were fortunate to not need extra supply capacity due to having a massive 3 phase supply capacity just needed more panel space to allow the circuits. This would be a solid solution for buildings that don’t have the power supply available or don’t have the capital improvement funds to do an unlimited install as it was almost a quarter million dollars not counting the individual spot installs.
Wow what an amazing install! 250 spots is crazy! Well done getting that rolled out. Definitely a complex endeavor. Level 2 right? - Liv
Wow, your building is at the cutting edge of EV adoption. When completed, someone should produce a YT story on your success.
@@MachE_VLOG yeah, my understanding is it would support up to 60 AMP for each one though I doubt most would do that. Most seem to install NEMA 14-50s based on the existing installs. We were very lucky our board almost all drives EVs so it was mostly gathering data for the rest of the community to prove that it was in fact a smart project.
@@johnpoldo8817 I wish we had the EVs to go along with the charging capability.i think we’re at probably 20% of vehicles in our garage, but it’s already noticeably accelerated after this project was given the green light. I know of 2 other people including myself who bought an EV shortly after the vote passed and about 10 others that plan to next time they purchase. I wish I knew all the details, it was already underway by the time I found out about it and started helping to try to push it along.
@@johndavis7257 A 20% adoption rate for Texas is very high. This must be a very upscale building. Our southern condo only has 6% adoption, but higher value northern space has nearly 25% adoption.
I'm waiting for San Francisco to come up with an incentive program similar to the one mentioned here by Peninsula Clean Energy so I can get my building setup like this.🤞
Did they say that they have 90 parking spaces onsite and 30 chargers were installed? Did I hear that correctly? If the spaces are deeded to the units how do they decide who gets to use which chargers?
I ask because my building has deeded spaces and the current incentive program for multifamily charging in SF is not enough to cover the cost to install a charger in every parking space plus necessary infrastructure upgrades. Just curious what other people are doing to manage this type of install. Thanks!
There is one, Pando can get you $3,000/charger give us a call
@@NagleessI've already spoken with Pando extensively. The current SF incentive programs available for my property don't cover enough of the cost for the project to pencil out.
@@Nagleess The SF program maxes out at $100k per property. At $3k a pop, that's 33 chargers, minus whatever infrastructure upgrades cost. Nowhere near enough to cover all the users who need a charger. That's why my first comment is asking if they installed 30 chargers in a 90 space parking situation? And if so, how they manage who gets to use them if all the parking spaces are deeded?
@@usflin Who were you speaking with? I know you can get $3000/station which will cover basically all of the cost
@@usflin I would argue that 33 chargers for 100% free is a great deal and Ill point out its 33 more chargers than you have now
Charging is pretty good and consistent with Tesla. What is hurting with adoption is the other cars, some of them are pretty horrible. Once the NACS standard is 100% implemented that should solve a lot of those problems.
Considering Out of Spec's reporting on the current situation with public charging in San Fransisco, It would been very interesting if they would have launched in the place where there is a highly demonstrated need for such a solution. If they tried and were denied the ability by either HOA's or City regulation an thus defaulted to the East Palo Alto location that would **VERY** interesting to learn. :)
I don't think they decided to do East Palo Alto over San Francisco, I happened to have a project to look at EV charging in this complex when they came out with their product. I have talked to people in San Francisco who are considering this solution now.
This is private use charging, not public charging. The property owners are the ones who decide what to install. Cost is a huge factor, and installations in multifamily properties can get quite complicated depending on a number of factors.
Palo Alto has some charger installation rebates that help offset the cost, which this project used, it was mentioned in this video (Peninsula Clean Energy). SF is just beginning to offer rebates but not enough to cover the full cost for my property, for example. Even if the HOA allows it, the homeowner still has to pay for it.
That’s great but I wonder if I used my own connector, what’s the possibility of it getting stolen.
It locks to the car
@@lemongavine Actually, some cars lock better than others. My wife's Pacifica doesn't seem to lock at all, but my Model 3 locks well. I am investigating having anchor bolts installed so residents can lock their EVSE to it.
what about 3 story condo units that don't have parking garages?
Mount it to a pole in the parking spots
If these are assigned parking stalls to specific units, I’m confused about this whole payment thing. Why not just tie the circuit of the unit stalls into the units electrical panel? That’s how our 110 units are done up here in Canada for a block heater cords. You have a switch in your unit to turn it off so nobody steals your power.
It is designed for maximum flexibility. At this location, parking is assigned to the unit. But this system is deployable to other locations without assigned parking.
It would not be possible to route the power to the outlets in the garage through the panels in the condos. There is a wall of dense packed condo meters in the electric room, but that is the only access to unit power in the electric room. No space to tap into it at all, especially with appropriate breakers and such.
How is this any different than the apartments who have been installing Chargepoint or other pay to charger chargers?
Every assigned parking spots get electricity, and we are not dictating which EVSE the resident has to buy.
Honestly amazing I don't have to worry about broken clips or anything.
I think this is a great stopgap solution. Sure in 25 years when 3/4 of the vehicles are EV, it’s not going to work, but in 25 years the system will be need replacing anyway. unfortunately, most states don’t have right to charge laws so this isn’t even on anyone’s radar. It took 2 1/2 years to make it happen with right to charge laws already on the books. That means most states aren’t going to see anything like this till well past 2035.
The reason it took so long is that none of alternatives I found fit the requirements and the budget. We moved pretty quickly once we found this option.
The whole idea is that one gets installed in every parking space and there's enough power provisioned in the building to support everyone charging at the same time.
What do they charge per kWhr?
Passing through the house power utility rate. There are ways to get it cheaper, but I'm not there, yet.
@@tomherbst Tom, make sure you cover transaction, communications, and service fees. Often there's a credit card processing fee or cellular fee. I'm a Charge Point Operator at a condominium builidng in Florida and I make certain the condo association is fully reimbursed for all fees so ICE vehicle drivers are not subsidizing it.
Pando has a small markup to cover their payments system but prices are set by the utility company servicing the area.
@@usflin Correct me if wrong, but doesn't the HOA host set pricing because he must pay utility bill plus payment system fee charged by Pando. The utility sets lowest cost for garage power, probably ignoring EVs. This is how my condo charger works.
@@usflin How much do they charge? Is it by the kilowatt hour?
Put two Chargers in the most inconvenient farthest away guest parking place, some place no one will take it unless they really need it. Weather for power or just park.
This looks like a good cheap solution, feel free to comment on my videos too.
Here is what we did in our previous condo, definitely more expensive though:
CAN YOU HAVE HOME CHARGING IN A CONDO? UNICO POWER
th-cam.com/video/v1oSRnyIvws/w-d-xo.html
And here is what we did just last year in our house:
CAN YOU GO 100% ELECTRIC WITH A 100 AMP PANEL?
th-cam.com/video/paU98Z4MuKs/w-d-xo.html
This would make more sense if the box were an EVSE and the EV users just needed a L2 cord, not an entire EVSE.
some apartments won’t allow ev charging because of fire concerns
@@zarb88 I've heard that. It's unfortunate that some property owners are misinformed about the risks.
@@MachE_VLOG misinformed or cautious because they don’t want their insurance canceled
@@zarb88Misinformed
Since ICE vehicles have a higher fire risk, based on government statistics, insurance companies should know the lower actuarial risk.
@@bearcubdaycare they are almost impossible to put out and in an closed in apartment building the results can be catastrophic.
Tesla Wall Connectors have had this feature since forever. It's call Group Power Management which shares the total load allocated such as via a sub panel. For example if there is a 120 amp sub panel then 2 cars are charging they can each charge at full 60 amps (48 actual), if 4 cars are charging they can each charge at 30 amps (24 actual), etc. etc, even with 8 cars charging at the same time you still get 15 amp (12 actual). And it dynamically manages the power so if one is done it will up the amps for the rest. Not every car that is plugged in will be charging all the time and at the same time. Note these are all for Level 2 at 240 volts.
There are a few chargers that support that including Tesla, Ford, Autel, etc. But this is at the outlet level with "dumb" chargers.
@@MachE_VLOG Don't get me wrong, this is an interesting solution for sure. The big question is how many amps in total and will it balance the amps so people aren't left out or down the queue with zero charge until it eventually gets to them. That is dynamically share the power to those that are needing it versus only charging at full (40 amp for 14-50) rate for a few leaving others at zero. Also, a company like this needs to get in contact with power companies to partner a solution. For example, FPL (in Florida) has an absolute bargain of a charging program where they also supply the wall connector equipment but only for single family homes. A solution like this might be something FPL would be interested in partnering with if they are not working on their own solution (they didn't make their own wall connectors for single family homes, they partnered with an wall connector company). Other questions are did the condo in the video have to put in a new service meter just for these connector outlets? Lots of questions. This could very well be a fantastic solution. I 1,000% agree that ideally each space has its own connector versus just a few shared use ones. For example, people that are seasonal residents only would want to plug in for the 6 months they are away so they get a trickle charge for the phantom drain.
@@danfoley1429 It will need to be monitored so that people are always able to charge in the time they need it. With the current number of EV's in the complex, I think there will not be any contention or delay.
"in Palo Alto, California"
Ok, now try it outside of California.
They also have several installs in Washington state.
We are also active on the east coast, just started moving into NYC ;)
I live in apartments and drove an EV for 5yrs they dropped the ball about putting in charging !! 😢 older building and middle of no where assigned parking spots ! So I make things work!
Thank you, Patrick for this video. I have also been considering a solution for a multi family dwelling. The issue I have with the solution is:
1. As was stated, the need for a dumb charger.
2. The need for protected parking that one could trust their EVSE to be sitting in. This would not work in carports in a non-gated community.
3. I don’t understand how they have any guarantees of charging in the evening if they have limited power and 30 of these plugs set up as he stated, I would think there would be times where some folks would never get turned on. Maybe they do a one hour max and then rotate around so that everybody gets a little, that no doubt causes lots of alerts on your vehicle application.
4. I would think the best solution though more expensive would be to have a cordless EVSE. The advantage of this is that power levels can be adjusted incrementally to deal with load and the cord unplug would be owned by the end user, thus avoiding a wear item. Though having user-owned cords is only common in Europe, it is starting in the US now with so much copper thievery.
Wireless only solves security because there’s nothing to steal. You can vary supply power very easily on a wired system. Hopefully, when all plugs are in use, the system rolls back power to a safe level. This is very easy to do in software.
Amazon sells lockable EVSE mounting boxes, which would be ideal paired with this solution.
@@RobBudge Thanks, I plan to check this device out.
The outlets to breaker ratio is 4 to 1 or 3 to 1. We don't have the density of EV users to have any contention now.
Doesn't do a damn thing for those of us in apartment complexes, NOT condos.
@@lrvman It definitely can. Property owners are more likely to install something like this than expensive chargers they have to maintain. This is a great solution for apartments. As more people buy EVs, apartment owners will be under more pressure to have charging options.
Americans love to come up with weird solutions to solved problems.
Somebody needs to show Tesla Joy this!!! @TeslaJoy
I dare you to show Tesla Joy. She will bite your head off in so many ways. It's her-way or the high-way.
Interesting view point i guess I don't get where you get the idea if I knew how to show her I would not sure why she would be upset and other maybe easier options given her struggles with getti g charging installed at her MUD thought this sounded perfect
@@gingerboi8711 I’ve followed her for years and discovered, unlike others, she doesn’t accept improvements. Try it sometime, you’ll see.
I've watched her series about getting installs at her property. Her property requires a more complex setup. Running power to every parking space, and provisioning enough power for every parking space to charge at the same time, adds to the cost of the install. The cost of the device is just a small piece.
She's relying partly on city subsidies for her project. Her city's subsidy program is structured differently than the Palo Alto one discussed in this video. The reason this property went through with this project was because Peninsula Clean Energy paid for most of it.
@@usflin Thanks for explanation. Obviously, she made the project much too complex with everyone being able to charge at the same time with full power. Why didn't she consider load balancing so less power was needed? Make residents use off-peak time and charge to replace only what was used.
Making the project utopia has caused major delays so currently everyone has nothing. I'd much rather have a working charger today, slightly imperfect, than nothing at all. How about you?