[MassDeduction]

BC Hydro is the public electric utility for the province of British Columbia, Canada. I tripped across something that seemed cool to me, and I wanted to know if this is common.

BC Hydro has rolled out a network of fast chargers across the province (about 100, mostly DC fast chargers, some level-2 chargers as well, many of them free), and created a BC Hydro EV app to access them. But, and this is the cool part, the BC Hydro app also provides access to FLO, Chargepoint, and Greenlots chargers too. So with the one app, you can access 4 networks of fast chargers, which together gets you access to most of the non-Tesla chargers in the province, by my count.

Is this kind of thing common? We need more of these kinds of agreements, IMO. Most of us do destination charging most of the time, but it's still valuable to lower the barriers to public charging too. And that's now a very low bar in British Columbia (a province that is larger than France and Germany put together, so that's not worth nothing! ).

 

[h8ten]

Here in Scotland I currently have 8 apps and probably about the same number of cards, some of the apps and cards are for the same network. Fortunately, or unfortunately from some peoples experiences, we also have ChargePlaceScotland (app & card) which operate the vast majority of chargers in Scotland, well they provide back-office functions to the site owners who have the chargers installed and decide on the tariff to be applied. There is no consistency in the tariffs charged, some are totally free, some charge a connection fee plus a cost per kWh and others with no connection fee but a per kWh rate with a minimum charge applied irrespective of how much power you take. I only know of two systems that are interoperable, the aforementioned ChargePlaceScotland and ChargeYourCar (It is actually CYC who operate the CPS network and CYC were merged/taken over by another operator who in turn have been taken over by another operator but charger access not shared). There are probably others but I gave up trying to get a card/app for all the networks as more and more have apps that can be downloaded when required. There is also a network that has contactless payment with no membership required, not very widespread at the moment but will grow through time.

 

[MassDeduction]

Here in Scotland I currently have 8 apps and probably about the same number of cards, some of the apps and cards are for the same network. Fortunately, or unfortunately from some peoples experiences, we also have ChargePlaceScotland (app & card) which operate the vast majority of chargers in Scotland, well they provide back-office functions to the site owners who have the chargers installed and decide on the tariff to be applied. There is no consistency in the tariffs charged, some are totally free, some charge a connection fee plus a cost per kWh and others with no connection fee but a per kWh rate with a minimum charge applied irrespective of how much power you take. I only know of two systems that are interoperable, the aforementioned ChargePlaceScotland and ChargeYourCar (It is actually CYC who operate the CPS network and CYC were merged/taken over by another operator who in turn have been taken over by another operator but charger access not shared). There are probably others but I gave up trying to get a card/app for all the networks as more and more have apps that can be downloaded when required. There is also a network that has contactless payment with no membership required, not very widespread at the moment but will grow through time.

Well then, I think BC Hydro is on to something. Access to four networks with one app seems pretty good, compared to the 8 apps plus (probably as many cards) experience that you describe!

It seems to me that the way forward is either cooperation agreements between networks, so that most apps/cards can access most networks, or just moving to paying by credit/debit card everywhere you go. Having 8 apps and as many cards is a barrier to the future success of electric vehicles, IMO.

Thanks for sharing your on-the-ground experience in Scotland!

 

[Hilltop Dave]

Scotland with the widespread CPS coverage (which I can access with my English CYC card) has much better coverage than England, which has a varied assortment of providers, each of which requires a different app or card.

 

[MassDeduction]

Scotland with the widespread CPS coverage (which I can access with my English CYC card) has much better coverage than England, which has a varied assortment of providers, each of which requires a different app or card.

I've noticed that from some of the English YouTube channels I follow (EVM and others). You'd think the networks would want to sign reciprocal agreements on the payment processing side of things, to expand the number of customers who might consider using their services. I wonder how BC Hydro managed to sign the payment processing agreements with the three other networks?

 

[h8ten]

There is an app (zap-map)which is reckoned to be a good one as it should have all the networks and be able to report the current status. It can be updated by users and they are launching a payments system and, from what I can gather, will allow payments to be made through them to the network that you are using. At the moment though there are only one or two networks that I had heard of and they don't include ChargePlace Scotland so I don't foresee myself using that facility.