340 On The Park Car Charger Study

340 On The Park, a 62-story, multi-family high rise building in Chicago’s East Loop, has been experiencing an increased demand for electric car chargers by residents. The building had surveyed its residents and found that many were planning to purchase electrical cars in the near future. The building, however, faced the following obstacles for accommodating additional car chargers: With eight car chargers already installed, additional capacity was not available to accommodate new car chargers on their current electric distribution system. Each parking space was individually owned and accounted for (no vacancies), meaning that the building could not designate any communal car charging spaces. The building also lacked capacity to accommodate any additional building needs on their current distribution system. As a result, Lieberman Management Services engaged Cyclone Energy Group in 2016 to conduct a study to determine how to add future expansion capacity to the distribution system for additional car chargers in their parking garage. Cyclone analyzed the current system and identified the most cost-effective, long-term solution. 340 On The Park has 6 parking levels (P1-P6) underground. Cyclone made the recommendation to add a panel on every other floor (P1, P3, and P5) to be fed from the existing distribution system. Each panel has the potential to cover 20 future car chargers across two adjacent floors, for a total of 60 new chargers. Additionally, Cyclone discovered two pumps on the existing infrastructure from P6 that will no longer be in use once the building transitions from using district cooled water to a newly installed chiller. Cyclone recommended utilizing this extra capacity to feed the panel on P5 and a new 4th panel on P6 to accommodate additional car chargers if necessary.