PORTLAND, Oregon — Plaid Pantry just powered up its first electric vehicle (EV) charging station at the Portland location on Northeast 60th Avenue and Columbia Boulevard.
"It's just a big experiment and we're excited to get it finally underway," said CEO Jonathan Polonsky.
After a year spent researching and another nine months of planning, permitting and building, the two-port high-speed charger is live. Polonsky hopes it will prove that Plaid Pantry can roll out more EV charging stations at its 107 locations.
"Most of my stores are in areas where the grid can't support high speed charging," Polonsky said.
That's a very common obstacle because it takes a lot of power to charge an EV battery quickly. Imagine trying to fill a swimming pool with a garden hose. The grid is full of garden hoses, but a little rocket science from Seattle tech company Electric Era helps turn them into water main.
"We brought a lot of SpaceX tech over," said software manger Sith Dharmasiri.
Electric Era was founded by former Space-X engineers. Their PowerNode installation at Plaid Pantry uses battery storage to supplement the existing flow of electricity from the grid.
Managing supply and demand is one piece of the puzzle. Reliability is another. "Uptime" is a buzzword in the EV charging world, meaning, reliability. In other words, does it actually work?
"When you're launching a rocket, things have to work. They just cannot fail," Dharmasiri said. "So SpaceX, in their software, they actually implement things called fault detection, isolation and recovery. And we bring that philosophy here."
Dharmasiri said the company puts a premium on uptime.
"And it's doing all of this behind the hood so that all the user sees is a fantastic charging experience," Dharmasiri said.
Polonsky likes the reliability and the peace of mind knowing the system can also function if the power goes out.
"I definitely wanted a backup battery because it helps me charge the store if the power goes down," Polonsky said.
Plaid Pantry plans to roll out another PowerNode at their location on Highway 212 in Clackamas next year.
"I'd like to try it next at one of our gas sites just to see the crossover," Polonsky said.
That Clackamas store is one of only nine locations that also pumps gas.
"Then with those two as kind of tests, I think we'd understand whether it makes more sense to roll them out to our gas sites or to our neighborhood stores," Polonsky said.
Chris McGinness is a meteorologist and reporter for KGW News. Find him here and on social media: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
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