The Longmeadow Select Board voted to change EV charging rate models and reopen two town stations.
Photo credit: LongmeadowTV
LONGMEADOW — The Longmeadow Select Board unanimously approved a change to the town’s electric vehicle charging, switching from a per-hour and minute model to charging residents by electricity used.
Longmeadow Energy Manager Amir Darvish joined the Select Board at its Sept. 28 meeting to detail his findings and request a vote on the rate change.
The town has four stations with level 2 EV charging. The Select Board set a rate of $8 per hour or 13 cents per minute in 2022.
Town Manager Lyn Simmons said two are offline and two are ready to be turned on, depending on the Select Board’s decision on the new rate structure. The DPW and Adult Center locations have had software improvements.
“The infrastructure that we installed after installation, about a year maybe after, the company went out of business and we were not able to just bring it back on with something else,” Simmons said. “Working with Universal Electric and our energy manager, they identified a possibility of a, kind of, a bridge type of software to allow us to get these stations back to operational.”
Simmons said the town wanted to test the new software at the DPW and Adult Center to see if it’s functional to launch at the other locations — Longmeadow High School and Wolf Swamp Athletic Fields.
Darvish sent a memo to the Select Board on Sept. 8, detailing a rate change of 40 cents per kilowatt-hour.
The memo states, “A per-kWh billing model is recommended because it charges drivers based on the actual amount of electricity delivered rather than the amount of time a vehicle remains connected.”
The memo also compared the rate to other municipalities. Northampton charges 35 cents per-kWh and Amherst’s on-street EV charging has a 40 cents per-kWh rate on level 3 chargers.
East Longmeadow’s rates can vary from 35 to 65 cents per-kWh, according to the EV-station map PlugShare.
Darvish said the 40 cent per-kWh rate is based on the town’s estimated electricity cost, the VoltiE network fee, payment processing costs and a “modest buffer” for cost fluctuations and transaction related costs.
“The goal is not to create a profit center,” Darvish said. “The goal is to stations self-supporting so the town is not subsidizing public EV charging.”
Residents will be able to pay using a QR code at the station and Darvish said he would monitor usage, revenue, payments, processing costs, fees, utility costs, utilization and overall rate performance.
“If the rate needs to be adjusted or further justified in the future, I will report that to the town manager,” Darvish said. “The short-term goal is to bring these two stations back into service under a fair and transparent billing structure.”
Select Board member Josh Levine said the board he was on struggled with rates and thanked Darvish. He said “this was the information we were missing when we did this the first time.”
“We just could not get a handle on it,” Levine said. “We asked Eversource, we did everything, well we thought we were doing everything to try to get a good answer on what made sense for the town. I think we really have it here.”
Levine said he ran the rate by his personal board of directors and it is a little high for what people would pay out and about.
“It’s much more expensive than at home, but not everyone has level 2 chargers,” Levine said. “It is within a reasonable amount for, if you’re going to be at Wolf Swamp, if you’re going to be at the high school or Adult Center. It is an amount that you will plug in and just charge for two hours and maybe you’re paying 5 cents more per kWh .. This is not what you’re doing on a road trip, this is ‘I’m in this place, I’m going to charge.’ This is right within the line and we can monitor it if we are overcharging. If we’re not getting the use, I think we can come back down but this makes a lot of sense to me.”
Select Board Chair Dan Zwirko said one of the town’s challenges has been knowing EV charging is a good thing to bring to the town but not wanting to lose money off of it.
“We also want to promote people that are using electric vehicles,” Zwirko said. “It sounds like, Amir, the work that you’ve done and the research you’ve done, is that this is going to put the town in a better situation where residents and visitors can leverage these chargers at a more fair rate while also making sure the town isn’t losing significant amounts of money as well.”
Darvish said 35 cents per kWh appears close to breaking even and he recommends 40 cents per kWh because town electricity costs can vary monthly.
The board unanimously approved the rate change and to get the DPW and Adult Stations back online. It will discuss the stations’ usage and costs after monitoring for about six months to one year.
