cts | Volt a Day | The Last Mile October 19, 2010

It was, in the Internet Service Provider business and the telephone service business, the messiest part of the system: the last mile to the customer. Taking care of your network, all in your own buildings, across the tops of pole your company had stuck in the ground, and across hardware that you owned (or leased) was really an understandable engineering (and business) model. That last bit, where you were running a line (that you probably owned) across property the customer owned (or rented, even worse), and connected to a building (and hardware) provided by someone else... it’s just a nightmare of unforeseen circumstances, tremendous variables, and headaches that can’t always be solved.

Ma Bell’s children figured that out pretty quickly. All of the little regional telephone companies just started saying, “We bring the service to the side of your house, after that you’re on your own. We’ll help if you hire us at some astronomical rate, but it’s not like we’ll warranty our work. That’s just a mess.”

I can’t believe that GM wanted to wade into this business, but it is inevitable with an electric car. No matter what, at some point you have to connect the vehicle to a local utility company and someone was going to have to be responsible for various parts of that process. Most importantly, If something goes wrong with the process, even if it is the fault of the homeowner, the utility company, the electrical contractor or the local municipality... it would end up reflecting badly on GM, Chevy, the Volt, and plug-in cars in general. So there is a significant effort within GM to understand the process (which varies from coast to coast) and to help customers streamline it.

In some ways, I’m easy. We already have an electric car, so there is already wiring out to the garage, already a separate meter, and already an awareness of the issues. But I am also a test case, so we’ll see how this goes.

My electric utility is Southern California Edison. They seem to have some dedicated EV personnel within the company. I’ve had a couple calls from people who really know what a charger is, how it is used, and what’s required from the company. I went on the website and walked through a little process where they asked various questions about the house, the current wiring, and how the car would be used (and charged). They then called to say that I would want to stay with my current rate, which included a meter on a specific TOU-EV (Time of Use, Electric Vehicle) rate. We had installed solar panels a couple years ago and when we did we switched the entire house to TOU. (That means we use cheap electricity at night, when everyone is home, and then sell back to SCE at triple that rate during the daylight hours when no one is home and the solar panels are cranking out the kilowatt hours.

My inclination would be to have the whole house on a single rate, but switching to a single meter would cost $80 a year (which would certainly climb as the electric rates increase over the next decade). Because of a little parts issue with the dual-meter mount (a loss of UL-listing or a de-rating, something a little messy), they will uninstall the old EV meter and then come back and put a new one in.

Today two teams will arrive at the house. The first will be an Edison team removing the old meter (and perhaps installing a new one with a new dual-meter mount). The second team is a contractor that GM is bringing in to install the actual charger in the garage. That will be much more exciting, because I’ll have a new, modern EV charger mounted on the other wall of the garage.

If there is, there will be a picture of it here tomorrow (Wednesday, October 20th). In either case, there will be a journal of the activity at the house, since anyone in SoCal getting a Volt will want information about the process.

For the record, I predict that the City of Santa Monica will be the biggest hinderance. The Department of Building and Safety has a huge amount of power over here on the west side of Los Angeles and they wield it whenever they can.