PORTLAND, Oregon — Will my home support a level 2 charger installation? Who's best suited to do this safely? When I get out on the road, will there be enough reliable public charging to get me to all the places I want to go — and back again?
These are just a few of the most common questions faced by drivers making the switch from their gas powered car to an electric vehicle (EV).
“As someone who felt like they were pretty fluent in the transition to EVs, I was surprised at just how much more I had to learn once I purchased the car," said David Moryc of Northeast Portland.
David purchased his Ford F-150 Lightning in December, and found out what more than 83,000 other Oregonians have discovered: there’s a lot that goes into that transition to an EV.
“Logistics, and what to expect, from the 120 volt (outlets) versus the 240, to level 2 charger,” Moryc elaborated.
"We are transitioning to a much more resilient and reliable grid, that's becoming increasingly clean," said Portland General Electric spokesperson Stacy Maloney. "It requires a different relationship with customers, in the way that they engage with their energy."
The utility just unveiled PGE+, "an easy one-stop shop, to go through all of the things you might as a customer, to make that transition successful, easy, efficiently, affordably, and to connect you with rebates and incentives that actually put money back in your wallet," Maloney said.
Rob Grove, owner of EV Charge PDX, said working with a specialist can help optimize your electric use. Access to higher-power level-2 charging at home is what really drives the cost comparison between traditional gas powered cars and EVs.
"All we do are EV charger installations," he said. "We spend time, both during the upfront assessment, as well as after the electricity comes on, to make sure people understand what all those opportunities are.”
Charging on the road is not as seamless yet, as David quickly found out.
"One really practical example: in Tillamook, where I’d learned there were some fast chargers, when a couple of those were broken, that there was a pileup of cars, waiting to recharge," David said. He ended up driving all the way to Lincoln City that day to find a fast charger capable of charging him up for the trip back to Portland. "So while I thought I’d get home at 5 p.m., I got home at 8 p.m."
The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) just received an additional $10 million in federal funds to address broken public chargers around the state. The first wave of fixes will focus on 450 identified problem sites, according to ODOT's Matt Noble.
There are about 2,900 public EV charging ports throughout the state, says Noble.
"(Charger owners) are required to have a 20% match to whatever funds they receive. So this isn't just any sort of handout. They do have some financial responsibility," he said. "They also have to adhere to reliability standards from the federal government. That's a 97% uptime. And they are required to maintain the chargers."
"People in Oregon want to go to the coast. So building out that infrastructure would be super helpful," Moryc said. "The amount of money that I save now… that makes me feel great, let alone the fact that I’m not burning fossil fuels anymore."
He said his last SUV was averaging only 16 miles per gallon. At that rate, the switch to an EV means David has cut his CO2 emissions by about 8 metric tons per year.