Loading...What does a horse have to do with the electrical industry? Well, we’re talking transportation today, and once upon a time, if you wanted to get from point A to point B quickly, horseback was the only way. But when Henry Ford came along and revolutionized the automobile industry, he said, “If I asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.” Good thing for us, he built a car instead.
Our country is in need of a new, innovative idea, and the NECA-IBEW team just might have it. It means trading in this gas pump to this – a fully electric car charged with the 240-volt connector. And when you do the math, it works out to about 2 cents per mile – compared to about 40 cents per mile for traditional gas. Sounds pretty good to me.
By 2015, a government mandate is calling for 1 million of these electric vehicles to be on the road. So, no matter where you drive – East Coast, or West, on a bridge, highway, or city street – all 1 million will use a variety of different stations to fuel up, but only one standard plug, like this, according to Mike Dinucci of Columb Technologies.
Mike Dinucci, Vice President, Strategic Accounts, Columb Technologies
“I wish cell phone companies would do this – I wish an iPhone charger would charge a Blackberry, or even an old Blackberry charger would charge a new Blackberry. You see the pin out is five pins. You’ve got a ground at the bottom, two hots, and then two communication lines in the middle.”
Mike also took the time to show us their stations and their advantages.
Mike Dinucci, Vice President, Strategic Accounts, Columb Technologies
“This is our home station right here, this is the CT 500 network charging station, designed to be deployed on your garage wall. The CT 2100 family of stations, which you see right here, made of an anodized aluminum extrusion, access and security control. The antennas in the head cap are hidden and in general it’s just a much sturdier unity designed for public, curbside, any type of public commercial deployment.”
“The stations do not provide any electric current or energy if an authorized session has not been put into play. It eliminates the danger, the hazard, the liability of providing 220-volt outlet out in public, open air, maybe in the rain, standing in a rain puddle. In the case of the commercial station, you have two charging outputs. You’ve got a 120 volt/16 amps, then you have a second output that’s 240 volts at 32 amps. In terms of charging time, a 100-mile battery pack that you would find in the Nissan Leaf, a 110-volt cord would charge that entire battery pack in about 15 hours, whereas with this you double the voltage, double the amperage, but you are increasing the speed five times. So it charges the battery pack in about three hours.”
“So I’ll demonstrate that for you now by using one of our subscription cards here. You hold it near the lock right here, and it’s authorizing. The door will unlock and I have a tester cord here with the little circuit testing bulb, and the finally close and lock the door. Now the bulb lights up, the station energizes, the door is locked over the cord so you now have cord security. And you can leave, knowing that your car will be charging while you’re gone. When your car is done charging, not only will the station end the session, and de-energize, but it will also, using the wireless technology, send you an email or a text message to your smartphone. If somebody were to come trip over your cord, or because all the cars use the same connector, if someone were to come and pull it out of your bumper and put it into their own, the station recognizes that break and will instantly de-energize, shut off the energy, terminate the session and it will send you a text message.”
“The requirements to undertake this massive shift is going to mean job creation, it’s going to mean a lot of deployments in places far and wide, and the need for qualified, competent, skilled craftsmen, electricians and electrical contractors to be able to do this work. Yu really need somebody who knows how to do these kinds of things in a clean, self-contained manner. We’re putting people to work to manufacture the stations, and better yet, we’re putting people to work to deploy and install the stations.”
Remember that stat from our story? Now over 1 million electric cars are expected to be on the road in the near future. They’re going to need to plug in somewhere, so it might as well be at your place of business, your parking garage, or your parking lot just like this one. But whatever you do, if you’re interested in a Columb Technologies electrical charging station or another manufacturer, you’ve got to insist that it’s installed by the NECA-IBEW team.