What started as a novelty is becoming the standard. Though still fairly uncommon, electric vehicles are a regular sight on our roadways. Before too long they’ll be the only option car companies provide in Washington.
While most EV drivers plug their car in at home, public charging infrastructure is essential to keep the electric traveling public, well, traveling.
To those ends, Clark Public Utilities works with its government and nonprofit customers to fund publicly available charging stations so everyone can get the power they need, when they need it. The utility helping those customers build charging infrastructure is just one program within the utility’s multifaceted Transportation Electrification plan.
In 2019, the state of Washington, which is a major proponent of increasing the number of EVs on the roads, authorized publicly owned electric utilities to offer EV-related incentives so long as they first developed Transportation Electrification plans to define them.
The Clark Public Utilities Board of Commissioners approved the utility’s TE plan in April 2021. While they were developing it, utility staff set several objectives, based on a wide array of information about current and projected EV demands in Clark County. One of the plan’s main goals was to design programs that would bolster the build-out of publicly accessible EV charging infrastructure locally. That’s when the utility’s EV grant program was developed.
“EV range anxiety is a major barrier to EV adoption and it was important to our commissioners and senior leadership that our plan and related customer programs helped create more publicly accessible EV chargers,” said Matt Babbitts, Clean Energy Program manager at Clark Public Utilities. “Designing a grant program tailored to helping our larger community customers develop charging stations does just that.”
Early in the TE plan’s design phase, staff learned that the chargers themselves aren’t the most expensive aspects of creating public charging sites — it’s typically the electric equipment upgrades and site construction.
Public charging infrastructure is a great benefit to the community, but all the work required to get it in place can be a daunting and expensive endeavor for organizations with slim operating budgets and already time-strapped employees.
That’s why the utility designed a program that covered all project expenses with the goal of truly reducing financial barriers.
The utility’s grant program avails the expertise of utility staff and the funding to cover up to 50 percent of all project costs. Applicable costs include the procurement cost of the EV chargers, related construction costs, and any electric infrastructure expenses related to the project.
Overall, the EV grant program accounts for 25 percent of the utility’s Transportation Electrification budget, which has been $200,000 annually for the last three years.
To date the utility has provided a variety of grants. In addition to projects at the cities of Battle Ground, Ridgefield and Camas, the utility has helped C-Tran install chargers for its fleet of electric buses, helped Waste Connections install infrastructure for its all-electric garbage truck, and helped the Port of Camas-Washougal with publicly accessible Level 2 chargers.
“We’re always looking forward to adding more organizations to that list,” Babbitts said. “We still have funding available in this year’s budget, so government and nonprofit customers interested in a 2023 project should contact their key accounts manager or call me at 360-992-3365.”
Energy Adviser is written by Clark Public Utilities. Send questions to ecod@clarkpud.com or to Energy Adviser, c/o Clark Public Utilities, P.O. Box 8900, Vancouver, WA 98688
