Tag Archives: electric vehicle charging

Public Auto Charging at Port of Seattle

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To have a comparison with the public charging station in Ballard that I looked at on Friday I took pictures of the north facility at Shilshole.

Working device

One of the two devices has no charge cables. The second device had both charging points in use.

I took pictures of the charging state on each of the vehicles. The PoS devices charge by time plugged in. The Seattle charger I looked at seemed to charge by KWh. Charging by power delivered seems to make a lot more sense. I was trying to get an idea of how much power these devices can deliver.

I’m learning about electric vehicle economics right now.

It looks like each of these cars is charging at about 1 kWh / 10 minutes. Because the rate at PoS is based on time, $5 and 4 hours might get 30 kWh delivered. The rate at the Seattle charger in Ballard was listed at $0.21 / kWh, with a maximum parking time of four hours. If the charge speeds are the same, 30 kWh in Ballard would cost $6.30. While the pricing structure is different, at least PoS doesn’t appear to be more than nearby.

Please leave comments about how usable the system is and how often you have to wait for available chargers.

Public Auto Charging in Ballard

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Public Charger on 57th Ave east of 17th

While walking to the post office I noticed changes to the public charge point nearby. When the charge point was initially installed it had long cables hanging down to charge two cars at the parking spots on either side of the utility pole.

Retracted Cables

Today I initially thought that the cables had been stolen for $5 in copper. Then I noticed the standard plug up high and out of reach.

This design seems a great idea to reduce cable theft. I’d be interested in hearing from anyone that has experience with this system as to if it works well or otherwise. Simply not having the inactive cables stretched out on the ground seems like it would reduce wear, though the need for the motor to lower the cable on demand from the app is one more thing to go wrong.

For the Port of Seattle to install something like this would require moving the existing charging spots to be at the lighting poles or installing significantly taller poles at the current locations, but it’s the first real solution to cable thefts I’ve seen.