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Plugging in a Lucid Air at a campground was a revelation.
It’s hard to embrace serendipity in an electric car.
Taking a longer journey in an EV means ensuring there are enough charging stations on the route, including on the way home. It means praying none of those chargers are broken — or worse liable to break your car. And it means downloading the right charging app ahead of time so you don’t find yourself searching for cell service when you arrive at the station.
But on a recent 750-mile road trip in an EV, I had a revelation: We’re over-engineering our public charging infrastructure. If we want to speed up the electric car era, we should put aside the apps, doodads, and expensive fast chargers and embrace the cheap dumb plug.
My revelation hit me on a recent trip from Columbus, Ohio, to Fontana Dam, North Carolina, in a Lucid Air Grand Touring I was driving for an assignment.
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When I arrived at Fontana Dam, I discovered that the vast majority of this section of the Smoky Mountains, including its nature-oriented resorts, does not have cell phone service and offers limited Wi-Fi access, meaning there aren’t many places to set up a fast charger in the first place. The nearest DC fast charging station is in Knoxville, about 65 miles away. There is a single Tesla NACS Level 2 charger, but it’s seemingly always occupied by hikers or car enthusiasts seeking a spirited drive at The Tail of the Dragon.
But charging there wouldn’t have been an option for me anyway, because I forgot to bring along a NACS-to-CCS adapter. For a brief moment I feared I was stuck in Fontana Dam — until I remembered the cord in the trunk.
The Lucid Air’s mobile charge cable comes with an adapter that allows its cord to be plugged into any NEMA 14-50 outlet, common at RV parks and campsites all across the country.
I had never used one before, but it was stupendously simple at a nearby campground. I didn’t need a cellphone to open an app to connect to the charger and start my session. I just plugged in the car like I would my iPhone.
Charging wasn’t blisteringly fast — but it wasn’t slow either. Since the car and the cord are both self-limited to avoid overheating the power source, it maxed out at 9.6kW per hour. That's not the 19.2 kW speeds the car is capable of, but it’s still very good, and stronger than the 6.6 kW found at many level 2 public chargers. Even considering the Lucid Air’s large 118 kWh battery, the rate I was charging would have been enough to go from about 15% to more than 80% overnight. An EV with a smaller battery could no doubt recharge completely in a shorter amount of time – the 9.6 KW supplied by that Lucid cord surpasses the AC charging speeds of some modern EVs.
The plug is not unique to Lucid either. Many EVs come standard with mobile charging cords that are capable of matching (or getting pretty darn close to) the maximum AC charging speeds the vehicle is capable of. If they aren’t supplied, it’s not hard to find a portable EVSE that can do so, for a few hundred dollars.
The key thing is that NEMA 14-50 standard outlet.
This is a generic standard, rated for 50 amps worth of service at 240 volts. It resembles the standard 3-pronged (NEMA 5-15), only larger and with two extra prongs. They’re the standard used by most modern electric washers and dryers.
They’re also what most RV campgrounds use. An RV can pull up, plug in, and — voila — it has electrical service.
The NEMA 14-50 outlet also underpins much of our charging technology already, particularly at home. In fact, most home EV chargers are just a spare NEMA 14-50 outlet on a dedicated circuit. You might get a few fancy features, like Wi-Fi or energy monitoring, with the wall-mounted box, but the electricity is probably delivered from a NEMA 14-50. Indeed you can find many threads on Reddit outlining how much you can save by forgoing the box altogether and just going right to the source.
They have a point — and not just at home.
The Biden administration is investing $7.5 billion in EV charging. Currently, the U.S. has roughly 130,000 existing EV charging stations, but the administration estimates that the country will need 500,000 of them by 2030.
Meanwhile, there are an estimated 15,000 RV campgrounds in the United States, many of them strategically located near popular destinations like national parks. If each location averaged just three power outlets, that’s 45,000 charging points that could help ease the huge EV charging deficit.
Now, I’m not saying we should turn every RV campground into a defacto EV charging station; EV drivers shouldn’t muscle out RV and trailer owners who need access to those hookups. But, charging the Lucid Air via the NEMA 14-50 hookup while on a weekend getaway allowed me to think more clearly about the way we’re prioritizing our charging infrastructure.
What we want from our EV charging infrastructure is ubiquity and reliability. Most EV drivers have encountered public charging stations that don’t work or have been out of service for a long time. Some might take too long. Or be too far apart. A bunch of NEMA 14-50 outlets would conceivably be faster to install in more places than more complicated set-ups. They wouldn’t be as quick as a DC fast charger, but, as I previously explained, they have the potential to be quite a bit faster than many public level 2 chargers out there, provided the supplied cord is rated for it.
Being able to just plug in with one’s own supplied cord would simplify the set-up immensely, likely making stations more reliable. A power outlet can be serviced by any common electrician, whereas EV charging stations can be complicated and difficult to repair. When they’re broken, the reason is rarely the power source; why not just make EV drivers responsible for their own power cord, akin to bringing along your own USB-C or Lightning cable for a cell phone?
Paying for the service might be harder to manage without complicated apps. I mean, I can’t picture companies or utilities doling out power without a way to manage or bill drivers. But, the self-supplied cable isn’t even a particularly new concept; in the U.K. it’s pretty common for level 2 “non-rapid charging” to simply be a computer-controlled outlet where the driver must use their own cord to juice up their vehicle. This seems like a small, easily managed hiccup on the road to charging equity.
Installing NEMA 14-50 outlets everywhere could put the EV revolution on the road sooner rather than later.
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And more of this week’s top renewable energy fights across the country.
1. Otsego County, Michigan – The Mitten State is proving just how hard it can be to build a solar project in wooded areas. Especially once Fox News gets involved.
2. Atlantic County, New Jersey – Opponents of offshore wind in Atlantic City are trying to undo an ordinance allowing construction of transmission cables that would connect the Atlantic Shores offshore wind project to the grid.
3. Benton County, Washington – Sorry Scout Clean Energy, but the Yakima Nation is coming for Horse Heaven.
Here’s what else we’re watching right now…
In Connecticut, officials have withdrawn from Vineyard Wind 2 — leading to the project being indefinitely shelved.
In Indiana, Invenergy just got a rejection from Marshall County for special use of agricultural lands.
In Kansas, residents in Dickinson County are filing legal action against county commissioners who approved Enel’s Hope Ridge wind project.
In Kentucky, a solar project was actually approved for once – this time for the East Kentucky Power Cooperative.
In North Carolina, Davidson County is getting a solar moratorium.
In Pennsylvania, the town of Unity rejected a solar project. Elsewhere in the state, the developer of the Newton 1 solar project is appealing their denial.
In South Carolina, a state appeals court has upheld the rejection of a 2,300 acre solar project proposed by Coastal Pine Solar.
In Washington State, Yakima County looks like it’ll keep its solar moratorium in place.
And more of this week’s top policy news around renewables.
1. Trump’s Big Promise – Our nation’s incoming president is now saying he’ll ban all wind projects on Day 1, an expansion of his previous promise to stop only offshore wind.
2. The Big Nuclear Lawsuit – Texas and Utah are suing to kill the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s authority to license small modular reactors.
3. Biden’s parting words – The Biden administration has finished its long-awaited guidance for the IRA’s tech-neutral electricity credit (which barely changed) and hydrogen production credit.
A conversation with J. Timmons Roberts, executive director of Brown University’s Climate Social Science Network
This week’s interview is with Brown University professor J. Timmons Roberts. Those of you familiar with the fight over offshore wind may not know Roberts by name, but you’re definitely familiar with his work: He and his students have spearheaded some of the most impactful research conducted on anti-offshore wind opposition networks. This work is a must-read for anyone who wants to best understand how the anti-renewables movement functions and why it may be difficult to stop it from winning out.
So with Trump 2.0 on the verge of banning offshore wind outright, I decided to ask Roberts what he thinks developers should be paying attention to at this moment. The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Is the anti-renewables movement a political force the country needs to reckon with?
Absolutely. In my opinion it’s been unfortunate for the environmental groups, the wind development, the government officials, climate scientists – they’ve been unwilling to engage directly with those groups. They want to keep a very positive message talking about the great things that come with wind and solar. And they’ve really left the field open as a result.
I think that as these claims sit there unrefuted and naive people – I don’t mean naive in a negative sense but people who don’t know much about this issue – are only hearing the negative spin about renewables. It’s a big problem.
When you say renewables developers aren’t interacting here – are you telling me the wind industry is just letting these people run roughshod?
I’ve seen no direct refutation in those anti-wind Facebook groups, and there’s very few environmentalists or others. People are quite afraid to go in there.
But even just generally. This vast network you’ve tracked – have you seen a similar kind of counter mobilization on the part of those who want to build these wind farms offshore?
There’s some mobilization. There’s something called the New England for Offshore Wind coalition. There’s some university programs. There’s some other oceanographic groups, things like that.
My observation is that they’re mostly staff organizations and they’re very cautious. They’re trying to work as a coalition. And they’re going as slow as their most cautious member.
As someone who has researched these networks, what are you watching for in the coming year? Under the first year of Trump 2.0?
Yeah I mean, channeling my optimistic and Midwestern dad, my thought is that there may be an overstepping by the Trump administration and by some of these activists. The lack of viable alternative pathways forward and almost anti-climate approaches these groups are now a part of can backfire for them. Folks may say, why would I want to be supportive of your group if you’re basically undermining everything I believe in?
What do you think developers should know about the research you have done into these networks?
I think it's important for deciding bodies and the public, the media and so on, to know who they’re hearing when they hear voices at a public hearing or in a congressional field hearing. Who are the people representing? Whose voice are they advancing?
It’s important for these actors that want to advance action on climate change and renewables to know what strategies and the tactics are being used and also know about the connections.
One of the things you pointed out in your research is that, yes, there are dark money groups involved in this movement and there are outside figures involved, but a lot of this sometimes is just one person posts something to the internet and then another person posts something to the internet.
Does that make things harder when it comes to addressing the anti-renewables movement?
Absolutely. Social media’s really been devastating for developing science and informed, rational public policymaking. It’s so easy to create a conspiracy and false information and very slanted, partial information to shoot holes at something as big as getting us off of fossil fuels.
Our position has developed as we understand that indeed these are not just astro-turf groups created by some far away corporation but there are legitimate concerns – like fishing, where most of it is based on certainty – and then there are these sensationalized claims that drive fears. That fear is real. And it’s unfortunate.
Anything else you’d really like to tell our readers?
I didn’t really choose this topic. I feel like it really got me. It was me and four students sitting in my conference room down the hall and I said, have you heard about this group that just started here in Rhode Island that’s making these claims we should investigate? And students were super excited about it and have really been the leaders.