Since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, electric vehicle (EV) charging funding at the federal, state, and local level has increased with the greater adoption of electric vehicles.

In this post, a general system for assessing the necessity of a new EV charging site is developed using existing data sets, using New Orleans as a case study, with the purpose of creating a standardized metric for evaluating the quality of a potential siting for a new Electric Vehicle charger construction, given Boolean, quantitative, and qualitative variables, specifically in residential and commercial settings open in part or in full to public users.

A secondary goal of creating a standardized system for communicating the constraints and benefits of a specific site is created using the existing development plans resulting from the primary assessment process.

NATIONAL AND LOCAL BACKGROUND

Electric vehicle chargers are categorized into three “levels,” indicating their electrical output type and power level. Electric vehicles use batteries that require Direct Current (DC), while mains power in North America is supplied in alternating current (AC), requiring a conversion before charging. Level 1 and 2 accomplish this conversion with a rectifier built into the EV, while level 3 does this with a unit built into the charger itself, supplying DC current directly to the battery. Tulane University in Uptown New Orleans will be used as a case study for this section.

Level 1 chargers take 120 volts from a single residential circuit and send this to the vehicle, being converted to DC for the battery within the car itself. With an output of about 5 miles of driving range per hour, a level 1 charger connected to a car between 10:00 PM and 8:00 AM will keep the vehicle driven 50 miles or less charged. If a level 1 charger is placed at the destination of a 40-mile commute and the vehicle is charged for eight hours of a standard American work day, the vehicle will be fully charged by the end of the work day. The least expensive of the charging options, residential units generally do not require special installation or electrical work, and cost roughly $200. Commercial level 1 chargers typically cost $300-$500, and have been installed in some locations in New Orleans, including a recent set on Tulane University’s uptown campus.

Level 2 chargers are any AC connection that provides more than a single standard North American circuit, typically 240 volts. This doubles charging rates to 10 miles of range per hour, allowing for 100 miles of range to be recovered during a 10:00 PM to 8:00 AM overnight charging scheme, or an 80-mile commute to be recovered during a typical workday. Usually costs more than $1,000 for a commercial set, level 2 chargers tend to have time limits, can accept payments, and are often subject to greater restrictions on their use than level 1 chargers. Tulane University, for example, hosts one pair of level 2 chargers on its uptown campus, with a four-hour time limit for charging reflecting the possible 40 miles of charge one might need to gain from their commute.

Level 3 chargers are the most similar to the current fuel station for internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. Taking roughly 20 minutes to fully charge a vehicle and usually requiring a relatively large fee, level 3 chargers are used on long-distance trips and by those without access to a level 1 or 2 AC charger at home or at their place of work. These outlets are also used for vehicles with comparatively large batteries, including electric buses. As they need expensive rectifiers and a dedicated three-phase mains connection to deliver high-output DC power directly to the battery of the car, these chargers are considerably more expensive than the level 1 or 2 connections, costing between $28,000 and $140,000 for a single plug. Tulane University installed five level 3 chargers on their uptown campus, but due to the cost has restricted use for their fleet of electric buses.

Nationally, level 1 chargers tend to be used for residential parking and long-term business parking, level 2 chargers are used commercially in a wide variety of mid-length stops, like at grocery stores and shopping centers, and level 3 chargers are used on highways for motorists traveling longer distances.

Using these metrics, the justification for charging times discussed later in this paper is fundamental. If a level 2 charger is installed in a setting where users are expected to park for more than four hours at a time, this charger has a poor development plan and will require the EV driver to move their car halfway through their day.

OPPORTUNITY ZONES

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 went into effect in January of 2018, allowing states to designate up to a quarter of their low-income census tracts as Opportunity Zones. Louisiana designated some historically black neighborhoods around mid-city and downtown New Orleans as Opportunity Zones, along with a portion of the Lower Ninth Ward, the Venetian Isles, and a segment of residential and commercial blocks near Dillard University.

If a developer created new value in an Opportunity Zone or “significantly improved” an existing property, they would be exempt from capital gain taxes after holding the investment for ten years. The bill had other economic incentives, including a change to capital gains deferment. Until this point, assets could be traded under a Section 1031 exchange for a deferment of capital gains taxes, and the new law allowed Opportunity Zone investments to be transferred with those assets in a different class.

Opportunity Zones are a useful metric for identifying potential new locations for the placement of public level 2 and 3 chargers for a number of reasons. These communities have historically been subject to a lack of development and investment, including that in the form of transportation infrastructure. As identified by local and state authorities, these Opportunity Zones have a strong potential for sustained growth, given investment. Electric vehicle chargers fit well within regions of potential growth, as their placement in a community drives an increase in economic activity, as discussed previously.

Due to the usefulness of this metric, whether a region is an opportunity zone will be incorporated into calculations for identifying the quality of a given charger siting, as a part of the larger discussion.

CHARGER SITE GROWTH FROM 2019 TO 2022

Due to high variability across cities, making comparisons on a micro-scale is sometimes ineffective. Cleveland and Tampa, cities of similar populations to New Orleans, have vastly different numbers of charging sites. New Orleans currently has 54 public EV charging sites across the city. Cleveland, with only 26 charging sites, has less than half as many as New Orleans, while Tampa has roughly twice as many, at more than 100.

The number of chargers and the number of charging sites are linked, but rarely the same in any city, as a given site will often include multiple plugs. The most striking example of this in New Orleans is in Algiers Point, a community with only one charging site at the Holy Name of Mary church, but with a capacity for 33 simultaneously charging vehicles. The US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Energy Data Book identifies that for every charging site, there are an average of 2.6 plugs available for use. Using this general metric, it can be estimated that New Orleans has roughly 140 electric vehicle chargers. While data on the exact number of plugs is not known in New Orleans specifically, the national average provides a strong proxy for this rate, allowing for generalized assumptions.

New Orleans is on course to reach per capita charging site parity with the national average for public electric vehicle charging sites over the two years from 2019 to 2022. The number of EV charging sites of all types across the US increased by 157%, from roughly 31,000 at the beginning of 2019 to 50,000 by January 2022. New Orleans, in contrast, increased by 257%, from 21 total charging sites at the beginning of 2019 to 54 by January 2022. As of 2022, New Orleans has 14.3 charging sites per 100,000 residents, approaching the national mean of 15.0 per 100,000 residents.

As shown above, from 2019 (left) to 2022 (right), the number of charging sites has increased to cover a greater portion of Uptown New Orleans, some siting in Mid-City and the French Quarter, a significant increase in the Central Business District, and a greater expansion across the Mississippi River into Algiers Point from no publicly available sites to two.

As adoption increases to meet or exceed the national average, New Orleans has the opportunity to become a leader in the EV adoption space, setting standards for the construction and placement of charging sites. The data above shows chargers of all types and for all electric vehicles, and shows sites with restrictions in brown on the right. No chargers with restrictions were mapped in 2019 and thus are not represented in the left map portion.

DATA ISSUES

Data for types of chargers is divided into Levels 1, 2, and 3 while excluding the types of charging ports possible with each. Level 1 chargers can include proprietary Tesla plugs, the open J1772 standard used by all other EV manufacturers, and even wall outlets requiring drivers to bring their own plugs. Level 2 chargers can include Tesla, J1772, and campground RV outlets. Level 3, with the greatest level of variation, can include proprietary Tesla ports, CHAdeMO as it is used on a small number of vehicles in North America, and the most widely-used port: the Combined Charging System Combo 2 (CCS). As all level 1 and 2 charging ports currently on the market can be fitted to charge any electric vehicle with an adapter, including charging non-Tesla vehicles using a Tesla charger, this data mismatch has no impact on the mapping for these sites.

Until recently, level 3 chargers were manufacturer-specific, with no adapters available. Tesla vehicles can now be charged from a CCS port using the first-party adapter, and vehicles charged with CCS can now use Tesla Level 3 “superchargers.”

Data collection for electric vehicle chargers is not uniform across data sets, across years, or across cities. The largest map set for electric vehicle charging sites in North America is the data company PlugShare, which relies on crowdsourced submissions and includes residential units, sites with restricted access, non-functioning chargers, and wall outlets open for use by motorists. The map includes more than 225,000 charging sites, while the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Energy Data Book lists roughly 50,000 locations.

This variation could be the result of incomplete data collection by the DOE, overly-broad inclusion criteria used by PlugShare, or the automatic inclusion of DOE data in PlugShare’s mapping.

DOE records indicate similar inclusion criteria, mapping AC and DC chargers for commercial and residential use and those currently undergoing maintenance. The difference in the total number of charging sites listed could be related to the submission process, as the DOE records are based on reports from city authorities and submitted information contained in the Clean Cities report.

The most likely cause of the lack of continuity in the data is the automatic inclusion of outside data in the PlugShare map, which the DOE records currently do not include. PlugShare integrates with a number of existing corporate maps run by providers including ChargePoint and EVgo, each of which lists their own charging networks. PlugShare also includes all of the sites listed by the DOE’s report, guaranteeing that their data set will be of greater breadth than the Data Book.

SITING INEQUALITY ACROSS NEW ORLEANS

New Orleans has a history of flooding, both from heavy rains and storm surges. A portion of the city currently sits below sea level and is at risk of flooding. As shown in the map above, electric vehicle charging stations in 2019 were placed exclusively outside of regions prone to flooding, as determined by the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) flood risk maps.

New Orleans is outlined and highlighted in green, with blue indicating flood-risk regions. Green dots are shown to represent EV charger locations. As most electric vehicle chargers cannot be submerged in water for extended periods of time, the consultation of these maps protects investments and increases fuel access resilience for EV drivers immediately following a storm.

As a result of this placement away from flood-prone regions, EV charger placement excludes historically disadvantaged regions, including those with a high possibility for further development. As shown in the map to the left, “Opportunity Zones” of historical poverty, but with growth development potential, are not correlated with new EV charger sites.

The green border and shading indicate New Orleans, with orange shading representing Opportunity Zones. As discussed earlier in this paper, Opportunity Zones were designated using a combination of federal and state-level data, in communication with lawmakers and authorities at the state and local levels in Louisiana and New Orleans.

ASSESSMENT CRITERIA

The criteria for assessing the quality of a given EV charging site involves a number of cofactors, many of which can be excluded from calculations by using derived quantities.

Weather, for example, has a significant impact on the amount of time needed to charge a vehicle, and this charging time may result in the decision to purchase an EV with an internal combustion engine support component, like a Chevrolet Volt or Toyota Prius Prime, or the decision to avoid a battery electric vehicle entirely. Other factors involved in the decision to purchase an EV may also be considered, including the cost of the said vehicle or the possibility that the driver may need to take frequent trips of above 200 miles. These considerations can be solved by using the total number of EVs already purchased in a community, while not taking into account the reasoning behind these purchases. As most EV purchases will fall within the same uses for level 1, 2, and 3 charging, aside from electric buses or mail trucks, this metric can serve as a proxy for these other considerations.

Changes to the calculation system are expected, and this will not have an adverse impact on the scores of completed projects. This is due to the temporary use of the metric during the siting phase, guaranteeing that the metric is no longer in use following construction. Following the completion of a charging station, an adaptive metric is needed to identify the ongoing utilization and quality of a site. Such metrics will not be explored in this paper and is a topic for further research.

BOOLEAN CRITERIA

Criteria for the placement of chargers will be assessed with the inclusion of true and false variables. These include whether the site is accessible to the public, whether the site and the surrounding area are accessible for people on foot, whether the site and surrounding area are accessible for people with mobility issues, whether the site fits within the existing national standard for chargers (in the US and Canada this is J1772), whether the charger is placed within an Opportunity Zone, and whether the charger is fully operational upon activation.

The Boolean values will each count as one “Access Point Value (APV),” being added to an overall “Access Value Score (AVS),” as a scalar quantity. If the answer to a given Boolean question is “yes,” then that value will be added to the AVS, while a “no” will be subtracted.

SET CRITERIA

Predefined factors, such as the estimated demand, desired length of stay, as well as direct and indirect return on investment, will be assessed as part of the calculations. These factors can be measured after construction to determine the efficacy of their use, allowing for changes to the calculations to take place given further data.

Demand for the charger will be represented as a score out of 5. Demand is based on the expected or desired period of time spent parking and comparing that to the speed of the charger. A score of 1 would represent a wide difference in expected parking times and the speed of charging, while a 5 would represent a close match between demand and charger speed. The overall return on investment will be made up of two values, with “expected return on investment,” represented by a value from 1 to 5, divided by a “desired return on investment,” with a value from 0 to 5, with zero representing no desired return. If no return is desired, this portion of the equation is removed.

DYNAMIC CRITERIA

Dynamic criteria are the most subjective and can be assigned by boards of development and community leaders based on the needs of the specific community. Positive outside factors, including access to green energy sources in specific siting locations, can be adopted into the calculations, along with negative factors, such as the potential for the ecological impact of a given construction and increased vehicle traffic in a community. Positive factors can be added as needed, each with a value of up to 25 points, as decided by local planning authorities. Negative factors can be added as needed, each with a value of up to 25 points, as needed. If no negative factors are used, the denominator of the equation can be assessed as one.

FINAL EQUATION

Link to Equation in Latex

Specific acceptable values for use will be decided by municipal authorities, while generally negative values and those nearer to zero are less desirable for siting. Following the use of this system, changes should be examined to increase the potential score and community engagement with the new project.

Using this system, Tulane University’s level 2 chargers on their uptown campus have an AVS of 5. The demand for chargers is moderate, based on ChargePoint data, but most users need to park for twice the existing time limit, resulting in a score of 3. The desired return on investment is 0, making the return-on-investment portion removed, and there are no dynamic variables to consider. Under the system, the charger has a raw score of 15, which is non-negative and distant from 0. Local authorities can assess the quality of this placement. Non-included variables include the cost of parking, as it is assumed that someone using this spot would have paid for parking otherwise in the garage if no chargers were available. Proximity to a nearby green space, opportunities to patronize local businesses, and dining options could have been considered dynamic variables.

Following the consideration of these variables in the use of the system, standardized communication signage can be created to meet the secondary goals of the project.

MOVING FORWARD

This system can be applied to projects that have already been completed to assess their quality and gives the site holder all of the necessary information to create a standardized display for EV drivers. The current system of chargers run by institutions, businesses, and government entities has led to a lack of standardization in communication with users of sites, which creates friction in use. Using this metric, the developing entity has a strong understanding of its target market, the region surrounding the charging site, and the expected cost. Utilizing this data, the charging site’s signage can be standardized to include all of the necessary information for users, creating evidence for the community that the process for charger assessment was completed, even if this assessment took place as a retrospective analysis of the quality of charging.

Using Tulane University’s level 2 chargers as an example, as with the equation example used above, the following restriction exists:

Public parking and charging are available for $2/hour, with a 4-hour time limit for all chargers. Four level 1 wall outlets are available in adjacent spots. Charging is free with the purchase of parking. A park, dining, and shopping are within walking distance.

Shown above is a potential sign that communicates this information effectively and with greater accessibility for non-native English speakers. This can be done retrospectively to communicate restrictions, allowing the steward of the charger to reflect on the purpose of the site in the immediate community.

Communicating the purpose of a specific charging site, the amenities nearby, the fees associated with charging, the potential time limits on charging, and the restrictions of said chargers could be standardized.

A level 3 fast-charger at a rest stop on the highway may have the following restrictions:

The half-hour time limit for chargers, open to all motorists. Level 3 charging spots are free to park in while charging, and the fee for charging is $0.10 per kWh used. The rest stop contains restrooms and dining options.

A Power Series