Partnering with a Bay Area Community Choice Aggregator, our team provided technical and policy assessments for the implementation of curbside electric vehicle charging systems across four cities.
The market for electric vehicles for personal and commercial use has been growing exponentially, and that trend is set to continue in the coming decades. California recently mandated through executive order that "100% of in-state sales of new passenger cars and trucks will be zero emissions by 2035", and US auto manufacturers including GM have made commitments to transition their vehicles to all electric in the coming years. To serve the growing number of electric vehicles, charging stations of all sorts have been coming online across the state.
While the majority of electric vehicle charging currently occurs at home (either in garages or driveways), this solution depends on the availability of off-street parking with the necessary capacity to support charging equipment. For residents of multi-unit dwellings however, at-home charging is rarely an option. Many multi-unit dwellings such as apartment buildings do not have any off-street parking, and for those that do it requires the building owner, rather than the resident who owns the car, to make the costly investment in charging infrastructure.
Curbside charging is one solution to promote equity in access to electric vehicle charging. Existing on-street parking spaces in residential neighborhoods are equipped with charging stations and adjusted parking regulations to promote the ease or ownership of electric vehicles.
Gray led the technical and policy assessment team to investigate the considerations and challenges associated with curbside charging, with the goal of implementing pilot installations that can scale across the cities. The work included analysis of electrical and energy infrastructure to assess charging equipment types, policy recommendations to the cities for streamlining the implementation of systems, and geospatial assessments of applicable charging installation zones.
(photo credit: Green Car Reports)