Electricity Costs and Electric Bikes

A prepaid or normal meter can be installed for each user but it will be expensive and almost impossible to control. For example what assurance do a owner have that he is receiving the electricity he is paying for.

The only practical solution is to have a free for all points and evenly charge tenants for the additional consumption.

A sliding scale depending on the class and normal km may be fairer.

Some easy system will make faster sale of E bike. If I am in 10th Floor and wishing to buy a E Bike to save money and fuel , but I cant do, as the Builder has not provided socket at parking area. Getting a cable line everyday from Home to charge is difficult. taking the Bike to flat by lift is another option. I think a person from China can anwser better. They have E bikes and they have high rises. Must be having some sytem.One option is to have swiping/touch screen cards with prepaid money. You swipe at the connection box and key in the amount , the Plug socket is open for that amount. Or insert a card with prepaid money and after charging is over or one switching off charging as desired , presses some knob which releases the card after deducting the requiste money.

I think may builders will be willing to put these in their system to get provide better facilties to flat owner. It is a plus point.

A lot of people are using prepaid in SA. The card is inserted and the units are deducted from the card as it is used.

The electricity utility should drive it. because it could bypass the meters of the building.

My concern is rather the security of the bike owners. The problem is that while the card is in the meter and the bike is connected it would be easy for another person to change the connection to another bike or remove the card and place it into another meter.

that is true.

Let's look for more solution.

Another solution. Detach the battery pack and take home and charge. The pack will weigh about between 11 to 20kgs depending on the bike.

A RFID tag in the charge connector of the bike and a receiver in the charge plug all connected to and controlled by a microprocessor may solve your problem.

This could be a nice project for an electronic students looking for a final year project. (To whom it may concern, remember the discount to CR4 members)

One solution would be to have a small quiet genetator. Just turn it on and lock it up with a cable. I think Coleman makes one. Another way is to charge an exchange battery in your apartment, or just a larger battery, if the battery is not removable. I think you could transfer the charge, but am not sure.

Charging at point of sale or billing is probably not a good idea—in fact it's a non-starter; and it could bring more grief than it is worth—not only coin box servicing & tampering/theft; billing and collections; injury liability; retributive vandalism, and the like, but also from the prospect of being sued (e.g., in USA) for violation of disabled access statutes; or of being held liable for the consequences to a "paying" customer of a power failure or coin-box failure.

Accordingly, and because the power consumption will not be significant (if even noticeable in a large business or rental enterprise), passing the cost to tenants (or to overhead expense) along with other "common power use" costs is the better, and most rational, way to go.

Both a business and (to the degree, if any, that they notice) tenants of a rental facility gain common benefits in exchange for the small price of absorbing such a cost: lessened car traffic congestion, nuisance, noise, pollution, and parking space competition; more peaceful ambiance and serenity...to name just a few. For a business, the same...plus more happy customers; or alternative transportation modes for happier employees.

The plug-in facility need not be conspicuous; it fact it's best when it is not—those who require it will know its intended purpose; those who don't will not, and should not even notice it.

WalMart stores in the US is one example. Many if not all those stores have one or more inconspicuous plug-ins near the front entrance; sometimes near a public telephone. Sometimes a person in motorized chair or conversing near a bike can be seen near these outlets; and unless you look closely it's not always even noticeable that they are "plugged in." That is how it should be: stop, plug in for a spell, and move on.

This is an instance where discretion is the better part of greed. Trying to stick-up people for trivial amounts of power would be the epitome of penny rich and pound foolish.

What would be the approximate residential cost for an average user?

I'm thinking a straight fee, ~ 80% of that (variable to suit agreement with landlord).

E-bikes will reduce storage (USA=parking) requirements over other forms of transport. Would this be of help in your argument?

Let me offer my sincere support; e-bikes should be a great help in urban India!

Since you posted in the starter thread, I'm not sure if your "support" is for that "concept" or for mine. So let me pose some counterpoints to your notion (I think) of a straight fee, power purchase arrangement.

I said before that charging a fee, any fee, is a non-starter because

• It defeats its own purpose-other than to facilitate (and complicate everyone's lives because of) a landlord's twisted concept of self-interest.
• It is fraught with problems, some of which I've mentioned.
• It works not for but against the very benefit you mention: improving the storage problem.

Let me explain, using the landlord-tenants situation (we can assume that the advantages of not charging will be obvious to all but the most thick-headed of business owners and merchants).

In any landlord-tenants arrangement, a landlord either feels himself, or is bound by law to make himself, duty bound to provide certain accommodations and facilities to tenants, both individually and in common. Thus, for example: every unit would have a lockable door; the building might have a security guard; each unit has so many electrical outlets and light sockets; the building might have a parking/vehicle storage lot; the building might have elevators; the units would have toilets, sinks, etc; there might be bicycle racks; there will be 24/7 lighting in lobbies, corridors, at building entrance, in parking lots (etc. both for safety and security and finding one's way); and so on. Now let's consider those common facilities provided by a landlord, and let us further consider those common facilities, in particular, which might not be used equally by all tenants all of the time. It could be corridor lighting, the parking lot, a bicycle rack...things like that. It would be possible for a landlord to extract a rupee here, a rupee there, for use of all of those facilities, both those used more or less equally and those used by some tenants but not by others; in fact, there is virtually no activity and no service or facility for which a landlord could not collect money (could not reach in a tenant's pocket) if he was so inclined. So why does he not do so? Why does he simply accept such things as necessary expenses to be allocated to rents? And why do tenants willingly accept such (equal access but non-equal enjoyment) services and accommodations being included equally in all tenants rents? Why, for example, would one tenant not object to his rent covering the cost of, say, a bicycle rack, or parking lot, even in the knowledge that he will never use either facility?

The answer is simple, and much the same for, both, tenants and landlord alike. All tenants alike, and landlord, benefit from such services and facilities, whether they use them or not! A bicycle rack, for example, not only benefits its users (for storage and locking), but it also benefits non-users and landlord by providing a facility other than doorways, walkways, corridors, play yards, stairways, laundry rooms, balconies...for storage of bicycles; all tenants and landlord benefit by not having to see or make their way through a cluttered, unsightly living space; all benefit from not being "at risk" of injury falling over bicycles, or of liability and legal costs for such injuries (no one says, I might fall over that bicycle rack and be injured). All benefit from the building's being less attactive to bicycle thieves who might steal more than bicycles. All benefit from it's being easier and less expensive to keep watch over all those bikes.

The idea of common-access electrical outlets falls into the same category. Plus, there's the bigger picture of the benefit to the society at large. If we say that providing electric outlets for e-bike-using tenants in buildings is a good thing, say, for India—and a concept worthy of promoting and expanding—we must also ask what is the best way to accomplish that goal.

Here the answer, when it comes to funding electrical outlets in a privately owned and managed housing facility is equally simple and clear. If an outlet is metered or otherwise imposes a single-use "fee," tenants will be discouraged from using it; they will seek ways to avoid the fee...resulting, to greater and lesser degree, in the same situation as if no electric outlet was provided. Conversely, not imposing a direct use fee encourages use of the outlet...the very goal that is hoped will be fulfilled!

Now, some might ask why a landlord should not charge his tenants directly in the same way that a municipality would meter a outlet provided on a street or other public space. Why should the government collect and landlords not collect? The distinction—apart from the much higher cost of maintaining a "public" outlet—is, simply, that one is public-access, the other is not. With public access, metering serves to ration the facility because the supply of outlets can never meet the real or potential demand. In a private housing facility this is not the case as demand is self-limited by the rent paying tenant occupancy load of the building.

Others might ask, what about the necessity (and cost) of adding more outlets as more and more tenants "take advantage." The answer is, go ahead and add more. The space required is very small--a square foot of wall space and perhaps a square yard or two of ground space—and the ground space can be "exchanged" for a much larger ground space no longer needed for gas-guzzling, large vehicle storage; the latter of which, eventually, can be converted to more profitable use or occupancy! (And architecture or landscaping can replace pavement.)

Thus, the wise landlord will give momentary thought at most, and quickly forget, any notion of charging directly for charging. And by not charging directly, he will be a hero, both, for his tenants and for Indians, including himself.

This is an interesting problem with world wide applications to the coming electric vehicle revolution.

My suggestion is to use an electronic interrogation and metering process where the bike unit sends its identifier and current flow rates (updated every few minutes or seconds) to the power supply recording unit using signal overlay on the supply cable.

The energy is measured in KWH, the only fair way, by averaging the current flow rate and constant supply voltage.

The process could be adaptable to automated billing and deny power to those who do not pay. The supply on off switch would be at the end of the supply cable; where a simple timing circuit is reset at regular intervals from a signal sent to the on/off switch from the supply processor.

Although this concept would require some electrical engineering and imaginative programming; it appears quite straight forward with a tremendous amount of intellectual property potential if you are into that grovel. The interrogation algorithms would have application across a spectrum of technologies from electrical metering to railroad signaling.

Gavilan

Both fortunately and unfortunately, all the technology and technocracy has its place—I would have to agree. However, in a non-public application as the OP describes, that technology and technocracy, in all but rare instances, is out of place. Since ideas both brilliant and dull can lead one over the cliff, why not help the questioner avert himself from what clearly seems a foolish course. He doesn't need engineering concepts; he needs help coming to a common sense decision. His problem is not more technical than placing and installing outlets, period. The great engineered solutions should be reserved for where they are suitable.

In general, the price of the metering equipment and its maintenance will exceed the income many times over. We see that in the new parking meters installed in our city. they are an expense for the city and the people that annoys everybody. Just make it free.

It is a small cost in order to have a business advantage. A 10W bike charger will use about $0.007 per hour. That is plenty of power for a bike. Even an electric car would cost a maximum of $0.10 per hour at the maximum capacity of a standard 120V outlet. The paving of the parking space and the taxes cost more than that.

Once almost everybody has electric vehicles, then the expense will be more important and it might pay for the metering system. Until then, it is a good cause and can be a better investment than thousand of dollars in a publicity campaign.

Don't buy problems, attract new customers.

Good answer. Thats how I see it Marcot.

milo

There are two parts in the problem.Having Outlets and How to Bill?

1. The new Builder/Architect must provide outlet points for charging. Numbers of Charging points can be to start with 50% of number of flats.Existing buildings should look at how to provide this additional facility

2.The Electric Bike model be entered in the Caretakers Register , who will put a monthly fixed charge , not depending on usage. It will be fairly easy . May be Bike owner will pay little more than actual but since saving is substantial he wont mind it. The poeple who does not own bike does not pay anything. Only the Bike owner pays monthly charge based his model number. Fortunately the Battery pack sizes will not be a large variety as Electric bike batteries are now standarised in to maximum 4 sizes.

3.If Some body wants to do a Business , then he can hire a meterd point in the Multistoried building against which he pays a Rent and also the Kwh Charges to Building owner/s. He then charges E bike ownes who gets it charged with him. He can also follow model number wise charge or may charge at the Use Kwh plus his earnings .

Questions:

Assuming you are speaking mainly about Kolkata...with new housing expansion and traffic problems...

In the typical multi-person/multi-family residential building, how is electricity charged to individual housing units? Is it included in rent? Or is it billed separately to each unit's head-of-household occupant by the utility company?

If billing is based on individual metering of dwelling units, and if charging station use billing is unavoidable, then why not simply bring power to recharge outlets by a switchable feed from each (apartment) unit's meter? This would be very simple (including adding wire from inside or outside meters to external wall outlet), relatively cheap to install or retrofit, and free of all administrative costs to building owner. The users of recharging outlets would bear the electricity cost in terms of a small increase appearing in their monthly (or other periodic) bill from the utility company. If initial conversion (in a retrofit program) presented a problem to landlord, then simply phase in the service (the outlets) as tenants request to be able to charge their bikes; eventually (perhaps) all dwelling units will receive the upgrade...but landlords will not bear the burden of outlet for dwelling units until the service is needed and requested.

Again, if billing now is directly by the electric company, talk of fancy separate or sub metering, and ways to charge for power at the point of plug-in, seems vastly overblown...even a bit silly. Why make it hard, and expensive, when it can be very simple, very easy, and cheap to do?

If the landlord/building owner wants supplemental income (from outlets available to non-tenants) he could always provide a few separately metered outlets for that, too...at his own expense, not the tenants'.

Also, it expanded use of electric bikes is a desirable, city wide, state-wide, or national goal, the above way of retrofitting and billing could serve that goal very well. Here's how. The government could consider passing an incentive subsidy to encourage installation and use of ebike charging stations. The subsidy would be passed on to e-bike-using residential tenants in the form of a rebate on their electricity bills. Perhaps this would be an idea to suggest to your local and state (Bengal) government. The landlords could benefit from the rebate program as well, like this:

In addition to outlets for building tenants, he could fund and install a number of additional outlets for public (non-tenant) use. As said before, these would be sub-metered (not simply an addition to monthly bill). The landlord would set the outlet meter to collect more or less the same amount billed to himself by the utility company for the combined metered electricity used by all "public" outlets. He would make no profit, or only a very small markup, on these public outlets he provides. However, he would be entitled to receive and keep the subsidy rebate payment from the utility company...this is his profit. (For him, the more supplemental outlets above the residents' outlets, the more income; for the government, the more landlords seeking to get more income with supplemental public outlets, the faster the number of outlets across the city grows! This would be a way for the government to bring about very rapid expansion in the number of ebike charging outlets, at negligible cost...by incentivising hundreds of building owners to add outlets in order to obtain the rebates on their utility bills. This is something like how Germany expanded solar electricity use very rapidly nationwide, by subsidizing its citizens and businesses for making the conversion to solar.

Once it was seen how successful the rebate program worked for Kolkata, and then Bengal, good chance the program would be adopted nationwide. Your city and state would be an idea place--probably THE ideal place--for such a program to begin.

if your interested in electric bikes, check out the electric bicycle forum at www.ebikehub.com/forum/

COSTCO in Olympia WA has a few slots reserved for people with Electric cars. They have 110v plugins to recharge your battery while you shop... and it is free.

Of course the idea is not new. In Alaska, the same idea has been around for years. In this case, the idea is to use dipstick heaters to keep the oil movable... or block heaters (when built in).

Now paying for it? that is another story.

Bill