By Joe Salimando www.eleblog.com
Don Karner is the president of ECOtality, one of the two national contractors making things happen in the DoE’s electric vehicle programs. As a writer for this blog, a writer for my own blog, and most especially as a contributing editor to tED magazine (“The Electrical Distributor”), I was offered a chance to talk with the guy at the Electric Drive Transportation Assn.’s April event in D.C.
Above, my best photo of the ECOtality booth. It’s boring, but it’s here for 2 reasons:
a – do you see the word ECOtality anywhere? Me neither.
B – just down the way on the right, you can glimpse the Leviton booth. ECOtality’s “presence” at this event was pretty large!
Big thing that stuck with me: ECOtality is a company with stock in public hands (symbol ECTY). Usually, people who work as top execs at such companies talk to media types as if someone had their entire body on a stick (yes, a mysterious puppeteer). That invisible hand, of course, is SEC regulations.
Some of that applies to utility company executives. They can be very formal, careful, and – to someone like me – not “good copy.” Karner’s background includes 15 years in the utility business.
So I was prepared for one of those interviews in which I leave with a notebook full of nothing. Karner was relaxed, open, and didn’t run away from any of my questions. Of course, it’s possible that I didn’t ask anything particularly challenging . . .
Something big I didn’t know: ECOtality’s charging stations (Blink) can incorporate electrical meters. So with one swell foop, you install a charging station AND an electric meter. This is pretty smart, isn’t it?
“In every one of our devices is a revenue-grade utility meter,” Karner said. “We are working with utilities [and rate regulators, I think he said] to make this the billing meter.” There’s apparently a pilot program with San Diego Gas & Electric.
Recent development: Just before the EDTA event, ECOtality and the electrical giant ABB announced an agreement which (among other things) gives ECOtality access to electrical distributors working with ABB. There’s more involved (including $ invested in ECOtality by ABB) – see the release.
On electrical contractors: ECOtality is working in 18 U.S. metro areas and, Karner said, is working with “a number of contractors” in these areas. There is a training program in which the company “trains them for what we want them to do.”
Something else Joe missed: “Most of our training is about property . . . the work [Karner said] is done under Davis-Bacon.” Of course it’s a Davis-Bacon project; the money for ECOtality’s role as manager of The EV Project comes from our federal borrowings from the Chinese!
[By the way, the other recipient of Chinese dollars raised via U.S. debt sales for DoE-funded EV work in the U.S. is Coulomb Technologies]
On electrical inspectors: The company is working with inspectors in those 18 places as well. “We want to find out if we can streamline this, so it save the inspectors time and so it save our contractors time as well.”
What’s the goal? Now, it’s important to understand that The EV Project will end, and ECOtality (and Coulomb) each have business plans. They’re in the EV charging station business. They plan to stay there. What’s the goal of The EV Project, I asked Karner? “We’re trying to establish a nuclear of people who understand electrical vehicles.”
Potential kickers & upsides: There’s more in the EV charging station business than I had previously thought about; Karner was helpful on these matters, which he called “additional value streams.” That’s additional value flowing from the EV charging stations, folks. What the heck IS this? Two examples he let fly:
- You can build a charging station that displays digital media on a screen. So while you’re at the “electric pump” for your EV, you’re getting advertising flashed at you. There are gasoline pumps like this in the D.C. area.
- Tout le monde has been trying to figure out how to make the home energy management business work; remember “SmartHouse” back in the first half of the 1990s? ECOtality has an adjunct to its charging station, Karner said – “a home energy controller that sits on your kitchen counter.” The company is working with Cisco Systems (see release from 1/31/11).
I admit, I had not taken either idea very seriously. I think idea #1 is about commercial EV chargers and #2, obviously, is for units set up in homes. It’s possible I was very wrong in ignoring these; Karner said it was possible that, if idea #1 takes hold, use of some commercial EV charging stations could be . . . free to EV owners.