New CEC solicitation for more interregional DC fast chargers

[user 340]

The California Energy Commission has posted a new solicitation for more DC fast chargers along highways:
http://www.energy.ca.gov/contracts/GFO-15-603/ (first file is solicitation)

Some highlights:
- $10 M available
- Mostly E-W routes (in addition to the mostly N-S ones solicited a few months ago)
- proposals due June 24 (wow - 5 months to write a proposal?)
- spaced for a 75 mi range car
- At least one CHAdeMO fast charger, at least one SAE CCS fast charger, and at least one J1772 EVSE each site
- Must include a maintenance plan & schedule

Here are the budgets and routes:

I-15: North of Victorville to West of Nevada $1,165,000
SR-101: South of Oregon to Garberville $1,050,000
I-10: Beaumont to Blythe $930,000
SR-101: Leggett to North of Santa Rosa $875,000
I-80: Auburn to West of Nevada $875,000
I-50: Placerville to South Lake Tahoe $700,000
SR-14: East of Santa Clarita to Inyokern $700,000
SR-58: East of Bakersfield to Lenwood $700,000
SR-152: SR 99 to East of Gilroy $525,000
SR-120: Oakdale to Yosemite $525,000
SR-41: Oakhurst to Lemoore $525,000
SR-12: Fairfield to Lodi $525,000
I-505: Vacaville to Dunnigan $350,000
SR-49: Auburn to Grass Valley $350,000
I-205/I-580: Ulmar to Tracy $175,000

It is nice to see that the CEC is finally getting serious about DCFCs; when combined with last year's solicitation, this makes $20M available for corridor DCFCs - the same amount they spend on H2 fueling stations each year! The down side is that it will take forever to actually get them installed; (most of) the few ones solicited in 2013 are not yet operational.

 

[miimura]

I just looked up the requirements for PON-13-606 which awarded proposed grants in April 2014. These grants notably included funding for corridor chargers on CA-99 and I-5. None of these chargers have shown up as active yet in January 2016.

The original solicitation included the following requirement: "All work must be scheduled for completion by March 30, 2018, including a minimum of 6 months of data collection and reporting". Sigh...

 

[Michael Bornstein]

Tgreene, thanks for the info. The main problem I see is that the specs are not very specific. For instance, the SR 58 request is to place one somewhere between Bakersfield and Lenwood (which is a suburb of Barstow). What if some charlatan places it 10 miles east of Bakersfield or 10 miles west of Barstow? Is it still within the specs? Would it serve any purpose? The best place for that route would be in Mojave which would serve both SR-58 and SR-14. Then the SR-14 charger could be placed between Mojave and Santa Clarita or between Mojave and Ridgecrest/Inyokern. It would have been better to have the state engineers/Caltrans specify a site +/- a few miles rather than give such long stretches.

BTW Tom, I did write another e-mail as you suggested.

 

[user 340]

I just checked the required completion dates in this new solicitation and also in the N-S one from last summer:

DCFCs along N-S corridors, GFO-15-601: Completion by March 31, 2020
DCFCs on interregional corridors, GFO-15-603: Completion by March 31, 2021

Very depressing. Why does a solicitation released 6 months later have a completion date 12 months later? It seems like the CEC has not taken to heart the Governor's goal of having "infrastructure that is able to support up to 1 million ZEVs by 2020."

 

[JasonA]

Yeah, Tony posted this up and FB and comments have been going all over. Mine was why is there NO LOVE up after Sacramento on the 5 towards Redding and Shasta area near the OR border?

And I agree that the 395/14/Mohave infrastructure needs to be done up. After Palmdale/Landcaster its barren.

And it sucks GM is doing nothing to help grow the DC infrastructure.

 

[TonyWilliams]

The 3.3 million people in San Diego, the 3rd largest metro area in the state, got nothing.

 

[user 340]

Yeah, Tony posted this up and FB and comments have been going all over. Mine was why is there NO LOVE up after Sacramento on the 5 towards Redding and Shasta area near the OR border?

Um, the North-South ones were solicited last summer: http://www.energy.ca.gov/contracts/GFO-15-601/
There was $3.77M available for ones on I-5 from Sacramento to the Oregon border. Awards are due to be announced soon.