UT Martin has decommissioned the two electric car charging stations on campus, but the Weakley County Municipal Electric System (WCMES) has installed two charging stations near City Hall in downtown Martin.
Dana Hagan, project coordinator for the Physical Plant at UT Martin, said, “The electric car stations on campus do not work at this time. The company that produces them went out of business. We are looking at other options to provide that again, but we don’t have any at this time on campus.”
According to an article on Chattanoogan.com, the charging stations installed by WCMES are the first ones to be owned by a local power company in Tennessee as a part of Fast Charge TN.
According to the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC), Fast Charge TN was formed by the TDEC and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) working together to create a statewide electric vehicle charging station network that will reduce transportation barriers across the state. This new partnership should open up 50 new stations statewide at an estimated cost of $20 million.
TDEC and TVA are actively looking for local utility companies whose services are located near a high-priority area. If selected, the program will provide up to 80% of the cost, while each utility company will be responsible for the other 20%, as well as managing the upkeep of the stations.
In an article posted by Drive Electric TN, Andrea Harrington, the general manager of WCMES, said, “We moved quickly to participate in Fast Charge TN because we want to make it easy for people to choose electric vehicles so our community can enjoy the economic and environmental benefits of electric transportation. The funding from TVA makes it possible by providing 80% of the project cost.”
Thomas Brewer, manager of accounting at WCMES, pulled information from a non-public company website that provides access to statistics regarding the charging stations. According to that site, since the stations opened in August, 34 different drivers have charged their cars there, and 99 charges total have occurred in four months. The average session length is 41 minutes.
The cost to use the EV charging stations is $.42 per kilowatt, Brewer said. Once the vehicle is fully charged the driver has 30 minutes to remove the vehicle from the EV charging station. If not moved within 30 minutes, the driver is charged $1 for each minute over the 30 minutes.
In terms of environmental impact, Brewer said that greenhouse gas savings calculations are based on the energy dispensed by each organization’s charging stations. “WCMES estimates how far an EV can go using the energy from the stations, calculates the emissions caused by generating that electricity and compares it with the emissions that would be generated by a gas-powered vehicle traveling the same distance. Actual emissions avoided may be higher or lower depending on how your electricity is generated.
“To date we have avoided 2,014 kg greenhouse gas emissions. That is like planting 52 trees and letting them grow for 10 years,” he said.
For more information on Fast Charge TN, visit www.tn.gov/EVFastCharge.
