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Charging

A Tale of Two Journeys – Part Two

This post is the trip report of our journey to Sechelt and back in June 2015.  The trip came out of an invitation to participate in a planning workshop for future deployment of Direct Current Fast Chargers (DCFCs) in British Columbia (BC).  For a quick primer on different levels of EV charging, head here.

Part 1 of this series can be found here and includes a description of the planning process. For this post, we’re headed straight to the journey itself.

For the TLDR; version (“too long, did not read!”), skip right to the heading at the bottom for “Trip Takeaways”).

A quick reminder on our trip plan – we would work our way across southern BC on Highway 3, utilizing Level 2 charging infrastructure over 2 days until we reached the Level 3 DCFC infrastructure in the Lower Mainland on the 3rd day.

Trip Planner Tool - click to enlarge

Trip Planner Tool – click to enlarge

The post title is a reference to how the  trip would encompass two fundamentally different types of charging and provide a stark comparison of the reality (as of June 2015) of long-distance travel via Level 2 chargers vs the future: the expanding network of DCFCs!

The First Journey (seeing the sights!)

Knowing that we had set a pretty ambitious time to leave town of 10 am on Friday June 12 (hey that’s early when you have two young kids!), we did a fair amount of packing on the Thursday night, then got up the next morning and proceeded to cram everything in… and left at the bright and early hour of 11:30 am!Read More »A Tale of Two Journeys – Part Two

A Tale of Two Journeys – Part One

Introduction

In May I received an invitation to a workshop to help plan future deployment of Level 3 DCFC infrastructure in BC. The workshop was to take place in mid June in Vancouver and hosted by PlugInBC. The workshop was to include representatives from government, educational institutes, BC Hydro, various EVSE network service providers and several other EVangelists. I was invited to provide some perspective from outside of the Lower Mainland and was extremely excited about the prospect of attending. I immediately went into planning mode and floated the trip by Marley later that evening – I could either do the trip by myself, attending the workshop on Monday and getting home late Tuesday night (or heading straight to work in Trail on Wednesday morning), or we could move some of our holiday plans around to allow her and the kids to come as well… and of course we would have to do the trip in our EV! It would have been crazy to drive our gas car to attend a workshop on DCFC infrastructure – I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to explore the current state of Level 2 and DCFC infrastructure in the various regions of BC!  (click here for an explanation of Level 2 vs DCFC and visit PlugShare to explore what infrastructure is available in BC currently)Read More »A Tale of Two Journeys – Part One

Clean Energy Vehicle incentive returns

CEV

Well, the Clean Energy Vehicle incentives have returned.  I am slightly bitter, since the program was cancelled ran out of funds in February of 2014 and I couldn’t buy my electric vehicle until at least April.  It was ridiculous of the government to sit on their thumbs for a year and put a few hundred early adopters at a future disadvantage in the used car market; but nonetheless, I think it is a good program to help EVs and PHEVs get on their feet so am happy to see it return.

Read More »Clean Energy Vehicle incentive returns

Follow-up on the Green Home and Energy Show

As mentioned in my last post, I was invited to attend the 2nd annual Nelson Green Home and Energy Show on October 15th.  I had a great time at the show and really enjoyed answering the different questions that people had and showing them the Leaf in person.

Some typical questions, in no particular order:

  • how much did your car cost?
  • how far can you drive on one charge?
  • how do you charge the car?
  • how did you get it to Nelson?

Read More »Follow-up on the Green Home and Energy Show