EV charging station funding re-instated

Alan Bailey

for Petroleum News

The federal government has re-activated funding under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure, or NEVI, funding program, to support the installation of high-speed charging stations for electric vehicles in Alaska. The U.S. Department of Transportation had suspended the program in early February following a policy review by the USDOT under the new federal administration.

Curtis Thayer, executive director of the Alaska Energy Authority, has told Petroleum News that AEA needs to update its plan under the funding mechanism and file it with the DOT by mid-September. AEA has been managing programs for installing high-speed charging stations in Alaska.

Thayer commented that a problem with the program has been delays in obtaining federal approval for planned sites for charging station installations and that AEA had been waiting for more than two years for these approvals. AEA had applied for the approval of nine charging station sites, Thayer said.

AEA has thus far been focusing on the installation of charging stations along the highway system that follows the Alaska Railbelt. Several years ago the agency helped fund the installation of some high speed, commercial EV charging stations on the highways, using funds from a settlement with Volkswagen over the company's fraudulent manipulation of emissions testing on its diesel vehicles, and from the U.S. Department of Energy's State Energy Program.

The proposed nine further charging stations would be located along the highway corridor between Anchorage and Fairbanks. Given that this year's construction season is already coming to an end, AEA hopes that the USDOT can approve the sites in a timely fashion by next spring. And once these stations have been installed it will be possible to investigate installing charging stations elsewhere on the highway system and in other regions of the state, Thayer said.

--ALAN BAILEY