What do you need to know about the installation of EV charging stations? | Ep. 15

Ariel Fan, CEO of GreenWealth Energy, and Michele Florence, GM at Azzurra, discuss considerations and experiences with installing electric vehicle charging stations. Resources: Assembly Bill 1738 – California State law will soon require EV chargers for existing multifamily properties, to be proposed by the Department of Housing and Community Development. GreenWealth Energy Partners Read Transcript [00:00:25.590] – Matthew Holbrook Welcome to The Uncommon Area. I’m Matthew Holbrook, and today’s theme is all about electric vehicle charging stations. To discuss that, I am joined today by Ariel Fan, who is the CEO and Founder of GreenWealth Energy, and also Florence, the General Manager of Azzurra Homeowners Association, a high-rise in Marina del Rey that Action Property Management has had the privilege of managing for a long time now.   [00:00:54.720] – Matthew Holbrook Michelle brings some real firsthand experience with this subject, so we’re going to dive into that a little bit. Ariel, why don’t you start off and tell us a little bit about just what is it, in a sentence or two, that you do and that your company does?   [00:01:10.330] – Ariel Fan Yeah. Thanks, Matthew, for having me on the podcast. GreenWealth Energy, we’re proud to be the first woman and minority-owned EV charging company in the state of California. We do EV charging at scale, specializing in multi-family space.   [00:01:23.450] – Matthew Holbrook Okay. When you say EV charging at scale, you’re talking about you do this, as opposed to one-offs, you’re doing it in large buildings or large communities, multiple stations at a time?   [00:01:35.740] – Ariel Fan Exactly. Charging is really much more complex than people believe. There are so much funding out there. There’s regulatory compliance based on the local region. For multi-families, they need to understand how to work collaboratively with the HOAs, the board members, the residents, as well as to understand and equip themselves with the tools to navigate the construction and also technology landscape for charging.   [00:02:00.240] – Matthew Holbrook Okay. You said something there earlier in your answer about there’s a lot of funding available. Who is that funding available to? Are we talking electric vehicle car owners, or for actual associations that put in charging stations? How much funding, and who is that for?   [00:02:19.960] – Ariel Fan Great question. We’re at the precipice of a complete overhaul of the entire automotive industry. We look at the federal level, there’s already 7.5 billion in funding going strictly to EV infrastructure. That’s only federal. California specifically has an additional $2 billion of funding. Then on top of that, you have utility funding, local regional grants. HOAs and multi-family properties, they can take advantage of it and be smart because there are many different strategies to maximize these different funding avenues.   [00:02:53.070] – Matthew Holbrook Will this funding be primarily in the form of rebates that an HOA, for example, they would install a certain number of stations and they could obtain certain rebates that would offset some of those costs, or how does that generally work?   [00:03:07.100] – Ariel Fan Exactly. This funding depends on the utility rebate program for that particular area. The funding covers anything from charging hardwares, networking, electric infrastructure, engineering, everything it takes to actually get the chargers into the ground.   [00:03:23.940] – Matthew Holbrook Okay, great. Michelle, just to get you into the game here, you manage Azzurra and you came in in the middle of a project like this. Maybe just in a really short way—we’ll unpack this more as we go on—but what’s the summary of what your experience was in this situation?   [00:03:42.020] – Michelle Florence The summary, my experience was I came in, as you said. They had already signed off on contracts that already decided exactly how the infrastructure and everything was going to be installed. It was underway when I started and I took over Azzurra. I had to immediately jump in and start digging into exactly what was going on and making sure that everyone was following the exact plan, making sure that the infrastructure, all the electrical work, the engineering, everything was going according to what was approved by the board.   [00:04:11.410] – Matthew Holbrook Okay, and that project is completed now?   [00:04:14.420] – Michelle Florence It is completed, at least phase one. I always refer to phase one because I do believe at some point we’re going to need to add on to it because the demand of EV charging stations.   [00:04:24.630] – Matthew Holbrook Okay. Well, I appreciate you being a part of this. I think as we dive into what your particular experience was, there were probably some learnings that we could take away from that that hopefully other managers and board members might be able to benefit from. We’ll come back to that.   [00:04:41.660] – Matthew Holbrook For both of you, and we’ll start, Ariel, with you. If I was a board member or a manager and know nothing about this whole electric vehicle charging station projects subject, but I know that obviously electric vehicles are rising in demand and there’s a need for chargers to be in my association, let’s say that I manage or I’m a board member of, but I don’t know anything more than that, what would you say? What’s the starting point? What do I need to know to start thinking about this type of a project?   [00:05:18.430] – Ariel Fan That’s a great question. We often deal with HOAs that are exploring charging at the very elementary stages. GreenWealth Energy, we’ve now interacted with a few dozen Action properties throughout Southern California. What we found, there’s a few different pieces to a successful charging exploration.   [00:05:37.300] – Ariel Fan The first step is how many chargers does your property actually need? As a board or as a management company, are you assessing that need effectively? We do that through facilitating a tenant survey. Asking the tenants, “How many of you drive EVs?” But also, “How many of you plan to drive EVs, especially if there are chargers available where you live?”   [00:05:59.340] – Ariel Fan Aside from that, especially in California, there’s a lot of code requirements that are in the pipeline at the state level to require multi-families to do charging. We’re looking at new construction code as of this year. As of 2022, 10% of all parking stalls for new construction must be EV charging capable.   [00:06:23.230] – Ariel Fan Yeah, that’s new. New legislation is underway in the next one or two years to require multi-families over a certain size to have them, even for existing buildings. This varies by jurisdiction, too. Part of the role of a proactive property is to know not just the needs for charging today, but how can you stay above the curve for this policy coming? It takes a lot of planning, to be honest.   [00:06:47.420] – Ariel Fan What we’re finding is that for a successful project, once you effectively collect all the bids, understand the different charging manufacturer options, explore different financing and understand rebates, from time you start it might be up to a year when you actually have construction.   [00:07:04.210] – Ariel Fan For California state, there is currently legislation going through the House and Senate to mandate that existing multi-family buildings all have charging stations. It hasn’t been passed yet, but this is evidence of a transition period we’re in. Properties need to get prepared now because these are very complex and can be very expensive capital expense projects. In planning and being smart about it, you can leverage the incentives and creative financing to make the impact less on the community.   [00:07:35.970] – Matthew Holbrook Yeah. Michelle, in your experience, I know you came into this in the middle but if you were to start, let’s say, at a new building to you, but an existing building that didn’t have electric vehicle charging and you were thinking about starting that type of a project, what are the main things that you’d be thinking through that need to be taken into consideration?   [00:07:57.100] – Michelle Florence Ariel mentioned earlier a resident survey. I think that’s number one, is putting together a survey and trying to determine not only what is the interest, how much interest, because are we talking about needing to put in 10% EVCS in your parking spaces, or are you talking more like 25%? Because as you know, it drastically changes the whole scope of the project. I think number one is getting a feel for your residents in the building and what they want and how much interest there is.   [00:08:29.360] – Matthew Holbrook Then beyond that, what’s the next step?   [00:08:30.820] – Michelle Florence The next step is I would probably start suggesting to the board possibly putting together a tech committee, because there is a lot of technology that goes into this and sometimes it can be really overwhelming to an HOA boar...