Electric Vehicle Charging Soft Costs Analysis

NREL analyzes electric vehicle (EV) charging soft costs, a potential area for cost reductions in EV charging infrastructure deployment.

What Are Soft Costs?

Although ample information is available on the direct costs of EV charging systems, little is understood about EV charging soft costs, which include the capital and time costs associated with permitting, inspections, administration, customer acquisitions, and utility interconnections.

The challenges associated with EV charging soft costs include:

• Defining EV charging soft costs
  Soft costs are ill-defined and economic impacts are project- and location-dependent. Estimates of soft costs are often inconsistent or not current.
  
  
• Understanding EV charging soft costs
  Some soft costs fall on the end user/consumer while others fall to the business. Which agency absorbs the costs depends on the stakeholder.
  
  
• Understanding delays and time costs
  Time delays add costs to the projects. Delays such as supply chain issues, permitting issues, and interconnection issues ultimately affect the project timelines and costs and efficient deployment of EV charging infrastructure.

Permitting is a core piece of the EV charging puzzle—and understanding the potentially time-intensive process for reviewing and approving applications for EV charging installations is crucial for successful EV infrastructure deployment.

To streamline the process, permitting bodies can create a standardized permitting process, simplify the review and approval process, and adopt an online permitting process. A permitting application needs to satisfy codes such as zoning, electrical, building, and fire, which vary with the jurisdiction. Lengthy permitting processes can create a bottleneck for EV charging installations that may impede EV infrastructure development.

For more information, refer to the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation’s permitting and site selection strategies for EV charging infrastructure.

Solving Soft Cost Challenges

To solve EV charging soft cost challenges, NREL is leading a multilaboratory effort—funded by the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation—with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory to identify, benchmark, and track the soft costs related to EV charging installation. Researchers are studying EV charging soft costs to better understand how they affect EV infrastructure projects to reduce costs and benefit stakeholders. Stakeholders include EV service providers, authorities having jurisdictions, installers and contractors, utilities, and site hosts.

The EV charging project team is focused on:

• Synthesizing the EV charging soft costs literature review
  
  
• Identifying and engaging stakeholders and looking to engage more stakeholders to inform the project findings. The stakeholders have also been continuously sharing data on the capital costs and time delays associated with the EV charging soft costs
  
  
• Analyzing the costs data from the invoices to benchmark the cost components
  
  
• Studying the EV charging station installation processes across different jurisdictions and how different processes add time and costs to the permit issuing process.

For the analysis of EV charging station installation costs, the team performed quantitative and qualitative analysis and documented more than 4,000 station buildout invoices across different states. The project analysis includes soft costs associated with customer acquisition; financing and contracting; permitting, inspection, and interconnection; installation and performance; and operation and maintenance.

Part of the analysis involved NREL's EVI-LOCATE: Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Locally Optimized Charging Assessment Tool and Estimator, a site assessment tool that aids federal fleets with the creation of EV charging site designs and cost estimates. This led to the development of a method that estimates the total costs for the station buildout invoices and compares the estimates with those invoices.

Contact

For more information on the EV charging soft costs project or to collaborate, contact: