California State University, Monterey Bay
IN-3: Innovation 3

Electric Vehicle efforts. CSU Monterey Bay's electric vehicle efforts are innovative for several reasons, explained below under specific efforts.

a) MBEVA STEERING COMMITTEE. CSUMB is a steering committee participant on the Monterey Bay Electric Vehicle Alliance, and has 3 additional employees (faculty/department chair, facilities and planning, campus sustainability committee) that attend MBEVA meetings. MBEVA is a unique tri-county collaboration of government, education, industry, trade professionals, businesses, community members, and non-government organizations. MBEVA is more comprehensive than other EV collaborative partnerships because of its wide-reaching focus efforts, and its non-entity volunteer leadership. MBEVA works to support the rollout of all aspects of electric vehicles by providing test-driving, education and regular guest speakers, legislative information and support, standardized policies and permit streamlining, charger and vehicle technology education, and strategic mapping and implementation of electric vehicle infrastructure and the pursuit and award of grant funds to support this, as well as the coordination of the entities, site evaluations, and more to implement the charging station network at strategic locations. CSUMB staff provides staff support to MBEVA that qualify as in-kind contributions on grants, supports the preparation of grant applications, prepares regulatory documentation for electric vehicle charger installations, helps develop standardized policy for commercial and residential electric vehicles and chargers, table at community events with information and electric vehicles, and work with the campus to install public electric vehicle chargers, and provide the first in-depth facility EV map in Monterey County.

b) ELECTRIC VEHICLE CHARGERS. CSUMB has partnered with MBEVA and other entities for a California Energy Commission grant to deploy a network of electric vehicle charging units in the region. CSUMB has agreed to be one of the first public charging locations with the new standardized J-1772 plug by installing several charging units at the best parking spots and primary destinations on campus including the Alumni Visitors Center and the University Center.

c) ON-CAMPUS INVOLVEMENT - LECTURES AND MAPPING. Staff in the Planning Department coordinate with faculty and students to provide presentations and proposed student projects relating to electric vehicles, even though it is not otherwise part of the curriculum. During Spring 2011, a GIS class four-person team prepared an in-depth analysis of electric vehicle and electric bike parking infrastructure opportunities on campus. This means every existing 110v and 240v exterior outlet; transformers and panels near parking areas, and priority parking locations were mapped, for use in identifying locations to develop for special electrified parking. Before the study, we thought campus had 3 exterior outlet locations and had no knowledge or documentation/mapping of all the existing transformers and panels (note: the University was a former military base with a significant number of repurposed buildings). We now know we have 25 existing exterior outlets that can be developed for electric bicycle and vehicle parking, and over 75 locations appropriately sited for convenient/inexpensive development of electric vehicle parking and charger installation. The students will present their study to the public in August 2011, and are anticipated to be contracted by other entities to do a similar study. The study will be used to prepare transportation electrification goals and implementation in the Transportation Demand Management Plan currently under development.

d) ELECTRIC VEHICLES. The campus has 15 dedicated Neighborhood Electric Vehicles used by various departments, but primarily by the Information Technology and mail delivery functions of the campus. Further, the University Police Department has a fleet of electric scooters they use to patrol the campus and stay more visible in harder to access areas in a zero emissions way. In the past year, the campus transportation planner has made efforts to provide demonstration electric vehicles to the campus community including Administration, such as the locally made (15 miles away) Green Vehicles Moose and Triac vehicles and the Toyota Plug-In Prius we tested for 30 days. A reference to some of these efforts is identified here: http://news.csumb.edu/news/2010/feb/1/csumb-takes-test-drive-electric-vehicles, and http://www.kionrightnow.com/story/11904847/green-vehicles-comes-to-local-college?redirected=true.