The Columbus Redevelopment Commission will pay a Zionsville-based company to replace and upgrade the electric vehicle (EV) charging stations in the city’s two garages.
Electron Charger will replace the existing two 20-amp charging stations in each garage with four 40-amp smart chargers in each. The project will also add two circuits, allowing for the potential of eight chargers in each for a total of 16, essentially quadrupling the garages’ current capacity.
The new chargers will provide more EV charging access and quicker charge times, and also means the garages will charge patrons to use them.
The cost for the upgrades at the Jackson and Second street garages is $28,657 and $23,075 respectively — the pricetag for the work to the Jackson Street garage is a little higher because a new transformer will need to be installed to accommodate the higher amperage.
Director of Redevelopment Heather Pope said the money for the project will come out of the parking garage fund.
“The majority of that cost is to improve the infrastructure, not the charging systems themselves, it’s just we are not able to handle the additional electrical capacity that is going to be required for these chargers,” Pope said.
The pricing to use the new chargers will be 26 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) — Gary Thompson of REI, which manages the city’s parking garages, said last month that the typical range of pricing is anywhere from 20 to 26 cents per kWh.
EV owners will receive a text notifying them that their charging session is about to expire and if they don’t come back in time, the smart charger would be able to charge idle fees as well, set at 10 cents per minute, although there are no idle fees after 10 p.m.
That’s all conservatively expected to net $3,347 annually at each garage, according to city documents.
“At that rate we expect the payback at Jackson Street to be about 5.28 years and at Second Street about 4.25 years,” said Harold Lockhart of REI.
The current charging stations were purchased and installed in 2018 for $13,087, according to city documents.
Lockhart said it didn’t make much sense to charge for use when the current charging stations were first purchased because there weren’t as many EVs, but that has changed.
“It did not make sense at that time to charge for the electricity, where today we live in a different environment,” Lockhart told the commission. “It makes better sense, we’re one of the few that are left that are offering it free, and so it might be time for us to step into the realm of the rest of charging stations, where if you’re going to use one, you’re going to pay for electricity.”
An Electron Charger representative said that in similar projects where a free charger is replaced with a smart charger that there’s “a little bit of stomach acid” on behalf of users for about 30 days where usage may dip before returning to normal levels.
In terms of installation time, Duke Energy will have to shut off power in the Jackson Street garage to upgrade the transformer, so it’s more dependent on scheduling, whereas upgrades to the Second Street garage will be done within two to six weeks, according to Electron Charger representatives.
