Mayor Mike Moore introduced the city is operating towards putting in its first electric-powered automobile EV charging station in downtown Jeffersonville on Monday.
“This is an exciting venture for the City of Jeff,” Moore said. “Right now there aren’t many places in the city for people to recharge, so this will fill a void. Plus, providing a charging station downtown is a great way to allow residents, employees, and visitors to recharge their car while they explore downtown, grab a bite to eat, or do some shopping.”
Chad Reischl, Director of Planning for the CIty of Jeffersonville pointed out a few other benefits, “The owners of electric vehicles regularly use an app on their phone or in their car to locate charging stations. Having a place to charge a car in downtown Jeffersonville, may actually be a draw for folks coming in from out of town,” He also added that, “Having a charging station in a prominent location also sends the message that Jeffersonville is progressively looking to the future.”
The station is to be set up withinside the public car parking zone in the 100 blocks of East Chestnut Street. The city plans to pave and stripe the car parking zone.
It is a Level 2 Charging station running on 240 volts of power. The station can have hookups for 2 vehicles to charge at the same time. Drivers can pay for his or her charge via a smartphone app or a reloadable RFID card supplied by the agency at the station. This way, the city will simply pay for the station and its installation.
Moore stated that putting up a charging station downtown is the simplest first step.
The city hopes to screen the usage of the charging station to decide if more are wanted in different locations. More importantly, the city hopes to incentivize the position of EV charging stations in new developments, encouraging builders of new hotels, huge apartment buildings, office buildings, and different primary employers to offer EV charging stations and/or set up the infrastructure that might permit them to be introduced later as a part of their improvement plans.
Reischl said, “It’s much cheaper and easier, to install the electrical infrastructure needed for EV Charging at the time of construction than it is to retrofit them later,” His department will also be looking for updating the Parking Standards in its Unified Development Ordinance to help include the language about EV Charging Stations in the forthcoming time period.
