Circuit Electrique runs the biggest public charging network in Quebec. The company behind it, AddEnergie, may be better known by residential EVSE users elsewhere as the maker of the Flo residential units. They also operate the L3 DCFC stations. While there are very few free public stations around these parts, we are to have a good number of them!
Here the L2 stations are billed in two ways: most are $1/hr, billed by the minute. A few are $2.50 per session, which make it a great deal for a full top-up of larger battery vehicles like the Bolt. They are available both at free and metered locations. Some metered parking locations will have free parking for EV charging (but you pay for the charge).
During the two days of going back and forth to the hospital after the birth of our second daughter, we made use of a Circuit Electrique charging station that is conveniently located across the street from the Glen superhospital site. It is an area that is relatively busy, and otherwise you'd have to pay to park. However, the charging spot is free to park when charging.
Here I bumped into a SmartED, which appeared like this on both days:
Whats interesting is that the charger lights up as green and shows as "available", but there is actually a car plugged into it. The first time I didn't think much of it, but the next day I saw the owner leave the vehicle with the charge active (indicated by a white light), but 5 minutes later when I went past the light was green again. So this was no accident...
What I then realized was that this individual was actually exploiting a loophole in the billing procedure to get free parking! Here the stations charge by the minute (at $1/hr), and in places like this one, you get free street parking while charging. However, in this case there is a flaw where the billing stops when the car stops charging, and the station display shows the message "please return plug", but somehow the billing stops and the station availability clears up! I confirmed this as I was leaving the station by stopping the charge through hitting the release button on the J1772 plug, but did not actually unplug it. I left it for another 2 minutes, but the bill timer had already stopped and the station returned to "available" status.
I wrote an email to AddEnergie and they said it is clearly a violation of parking regulations and a billable offence. However, I'm not sure if the meter attendants are aware of this particular detail, so folks like this one are slipping by. Eventually I expect such loopholes will be closed, but in the mean time, you might run into this kind of behaviour once in a while. (On the other hand, having chargers blocked by gasoline vehicles happens a LOT more often... :P)
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