Jeff,
I have recently come to the realization that work place car charging is likely the key to adoption of both more electric vehicles, and more solar panels. The key is that there should be enough stations are every work place to allow cars to be plugged in all day. This reduces the demands on the employees to go move their cars, and enables those stations to be managed much more aggressively as the cars have more time to make up for periods of high demand and low solar output. The reality is that in many good sun locations prices are the lowest during the peak solar periods. Illinois hasn't gotten there yet, but we will. When that happen the utilities will eventually persuade the law makers of our state to remove net metering and start paying us wholesale rates. This has happened in every state where day time prices are lower than off peak, and to expect Illinois to be different is silly. For the time being net metering is still a good deal for the utilities, they buy our output for cheap, and resell it for more than they pay us. We need to find more daytime demand, that is able to be managed. Electric vehicles parked in work place parking lots are an ideal load.
The employers aren't really doing this, and I am not convinced they are the best people to do it. I believe the utility providers are the best option. They are managing the grid anyway, so the chargers would be an extension of that management. They have the ability to install the service drops to feed the charging stations, which is the most expensive part. They are obviously licensed to sell electricity by the KWH, and in fact send most of us a bill each month already. It makes sense for them to install these services at every work place, issue RFID cards tied to each of our accounts, and allow us to all charge on what will eventually become an excess of solar energy during the day.
Hopefully this keeps demand for energy during the day high enough to keep solar from being uneconomical.
As far as trucks go, we are a pass through between the east and west half of the country. The great lakes force traffic through our area. That means we will need a large quantity of high speed charging for both cars and trucks. These are different demands, but it's definitely a concern that trucks pulling over a megawatt while fast charging have to get that energy from somewhere. On a positive note, the same solution above might start to come into play if the utilities put in bi directional stations at various work places. This would allow them to draw some energy from the vehicles plugged in there. California is already certifying the F150 for bidirectional grid tied generation, so it stands to reason the utility would use their work there and follow suit. The difference is that they would be installing and managing the stations.
