City plans more EV charging stations

By COLLIN GALLANT on October 21, 2022.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant

Six electric vehicle charging stations could be installed in the city centre by next fall, a city committee heard Thursday.

The Municipal Climate Change Action Centre is a provincial agency that works with cities. It will pay about half the cost of placing four charging outlets at the recently finished Towne Square development across from city hall, and two more higher capacity chargers in the Esplanade surface parking lot.

No budget estimate was discussed, but the grant would cover 46 per cent of costs, up to a maximum of $70,000. Grant money must be used within 12 months.

The public access chargers will spread out the network of now dozens of private stations in the city, said officials.

“All of the current EV charging stations in the city are located along the Trans-Canada Highway corridor,” said Grayson Mauch, the manager electric distribution.

“Eventually, and if grants re expanded, we are very interested to extend EV chargers to a number of public facilities, like the Big Marble Go Centre, for example.”

Charges at the Towne Square would be rated as level 2, meaning a full charge in six to eight hours, due to capacity constraints at the site. The charges at the Esplanade would be Level 3, capable of full charge in less than an hour.

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