Costs for Permitting, Environmental Studies, Utility Connections and more Can be as Much as 100% of Costs for the Charging Equipment, DOE Says

The enormous costs for building charging stations to juice battery-electric cars and freight trucks is a key factor in the slow pace of such EV charging infrastructure.

Supply Chain Digest Says... “We’re finding that land use and development codes, including zoning and permits, have the most variety across the nation,” Desai observed, according to Transport Topics. What do you say? Click here to send us your comments Click here to see reader feedback

In turn, many are surprised to learn that so-called “soft costs” associated with charger station construction can added up to as much the costs for charger and related equipment deployment, real estate and other more obvious cost buckets.

Examples of these soft costs permitting, inspections, administration and utility interconnections.

As a result of this situation, the US Dept. of Energy, through its National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), is conducting a study that it says will add clarity about the soft costs that governments and private-sector companies may incur as they consider the build-out of EV infrastructure.

The ATA’s Transport Topics magazine cited Ranjit Desai, NREL’s principal investigator for EV supply equipment soft costs, as saying that EV charging infrastructure costs are in general difficult to manage and compare and vary widely due to charger types and locations.

“With soft costs sometimes comprising more than half of the total cost of EV supply equipment projects, it’s especially important to gain a sense of contributing factors and to have them well-documented to help stakeholders mitigate soft costs, optimize and increase the cost-effectiveness of their buildouts,” Desai noted, adding “Industry data will be essential to helping us build that knowledge base.”

“With soft costs sometimes comprising more than half of the total cost of EV supply equipment projects, it’s especially important to gain a sense of contributing factors and to have them well-documented to help stakeholders mitigate soft costs, optimize and increase the cost-effectiveness of their buildouts,” Desai also said. “Industry data will be essential to helping us build that knowledge base.”

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NREL is working with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California and Idaho National Laboratory in a project funded by the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, a federal union of DOE and the U.S. Department of Transportation to encourage the transition of traditional energy in transportation to zero emissions infrastructure.

The primary objective of the new study is to identify how to reduce the soft costs for installing EV supply equipment so that more charging can be rolled out nationwide.

A big issue: lots of uncertainty in many cases as to what the soft costs will be.

“We’re finding that land use and development codes, including zoning and permits, have the most variety across the nation,” Desai observed, according to Transport Topics.

The NREL believes standardization of soft costs could pave the way to better predict and handle these associated fees.

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