NORTHAMPTON — With the new year Northampton’s public Electric Vehicle charging network has changed how it charges for electricity, designed to enable the city to cover electricity costs and maintain the charging network while passing on savings to users.
Since October, the price has been set at $1.92 per hour, but in response to feedback from charging network users and lower electricity prices, the price will change to $0.32 per kilowatt hour.
“The first thing to remember is we’ve been giving away electricity for free for more than a decade. It made sense early on when EVs were new, but now they’re really common and it as they got more common more people were using them and we were losing a lot more money, and it started to be serious money,” explained Director of Climate Action and Project Administration Ben Weil. “Then it became you wouldn’t expect the city to pay for your gas fuel up in your car so why should the city pay for your electricity, so we needed to be able to just meet our costs.”
The original price was based on the rate Northampton paid for electricity. Since then, the city’s Climate Action and Project Administration department, or CAPA, has negotiated a contract for lower electricity supply rates. This is reflected in the new EV charging rate, which is 7% lower.
The change from charging by time to charging by kilowatt hour will lower the cost for almost all users and will be fairer to owners of some older EVs and plug-in hybrid EVs that may charge at a lower speed than others.
“In other words, we calculated it just right. In all cases it’s a savings for the users. Even though that’s less income to the city, because we’re paying less in electricity, the city is still going to break even,” Weil said.
Charging fees help to ensure Northampton’s EV network is self-sustaining, covering electricity costs while supporting repairs, upgrades and staff time to keep the system running efficiently. For more information contact the Mayor’s Office.
Weil added costs will be reevaluated periodically and the city’s goal is not to make a profit but just break even for the sake of protecting taxpayer dollars. He added the city will always be focused on what green technologies or efficiencies can be applied in Northampton and investments like this are examples of those efforts.
“We want to move as fast as we possibly can while keeping everybody protected and so everybody can adapt at a rate that works for them but that we keep moving forward and we don’t make investments into something that is going to be a stranded investment that would be just a permanent cost to the people living and working in the city.”
