NORTHAMPTON — A new statewide electric vehicle charging initiative will be heading to Northampton after the city was one of 36 municipalities to be selected by the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center in an effort to expand access to EV charging infrastructure across the state.
Through MassCEC’s new On-Street Charging Program, Northampton will receive technical support and a feasibility study to identify locations and strategies for installing curbside, pole-mounted, or streetlight EV chargers.
Specifically, the city will be using this to plan on-street EV charging, particularly focused on making EVs a viable choice for residents who do not have garages or driveways.
“This is an important step toward ensuring more equitable access to clean transportation, especially for residents who don’t have access to off-street parking,” said the city in an announcement for the initiative.
The program is part of a broader statewide push to make EV charging more accessible to renters, small businesses and environmental justice communities. By helping cities like Northampton plan and prepare for EV infrastructure, MassCEC is supporting local climate goals while reducing barriers to EV adoption.
“The idea is to find on-street charging locations where residents primarily could charge their cars and thereby be able to consider buying an EV because if you don’t have a place to charge, you’re not going to get an EV,” Climate Action & Project Administration, or CAPA, Director Ben Weil told Reminder Publishing.
Weil said MassCEC and the city have been identifying locations near multi-family housing and residents in lower income areas so that the future chargers to be installed could be overlapped with different types of users throughout the city.
“You want to be able to plug in your car when you get home from work on the street, walk home, maybe grab some dinner, come back and your car is charged and you can move it to a different spot,” said Weil.
Weil explained MassCEC has already put out a community survey looking to identify areas in the city that would work with the goal of this program.
“We engaged the public basically to try and find where people thought the best locations from this type of service would be,” Weil said. “Now, they’ll use that to do the preliminary engineering that would allow us to go to the second round where we’d actually get some of these charging stations on street.”
At that point, Weil said he expects the city will start off with five new EV chargers put in five different areas around the city.
These efforts have continued for multiple years in Northampton, as the city has been actively looking to be a leader in the green energy space and set examples for other municipalities of what is possible for a greener future. Weil gave credit to the private sector of the city for being on the same page with them for a more environmentally friendly Northampton.
“If you look around, you also notice that on King Street, the private sector is stepping up. The Pride station has two new fast chargers. The fitness center near the fire station is adding fast chargers. The private sector is also adding capability and I think we’re going to find that a lot of people realize that once you have a car with a battery that lets you go 300 miles, your typically EV nowadays, you can go to the Pride station or the fitness center and work out, and come back with a fully charged car,” Weil explained. “People are going to find a variety of solutions and I think that’s the key is just to make sure that we have a really good range of options available for people, so it fits their lifestyles.”
Weil noted that those examples of private sector EV charger additions are fast chargers and that the new street EV chargers to be added from this new initiative will be Level 2 chargers. The Level 2 chargers range depending on its power source.
“Most people who drive EVs learn to not drive it to empty. They basically charge opportunistically whenever they have a chance. So, we are looking at what’s called a Level 2 charger. We’re waiting for the engineering on this, but depending on the power available at the locations, we can get what’s called a smart Level 2. It can work at a higher power, and it would charge roughly 75 miles per hour. This is an estimate because all the vehicles are slightly different, but it basically adds 75 miles in one hour, which is pretty good,” said Weil.
Weil continued, “The slower Level 2 chargers add more like 15 miles in an hour. If you’re parked overnight, or on your own street before going back out for whatever and parked for a little while, if you’re picking up 30 miles and doing that consistently — well the average commute is about 30 miles, so in theory — two or three hours of parking on even a slower Level 2 charger can kind of accommodate people’s daily usage. This is only part of a solution for different types of residents, but we’re hoping that this again makes the cost effectiveness of ownership for EVs open for more people who have perhaps lower incomes.”
The program is fueled by the Healey-Driscoll administration’s Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Coordinating Council through the American Rescue Plan Act. To learn more about the program visit masscec.com.
“I think Northampton has been a leader for quite a while. We’ve made climate commitments in many cases earlier than many other Massachusetts cities. We have a fairly unique department in having a climate focused department in the city. The mayor is kind of a nationally recognized climate mayor. She has been pushing for a lot of these issues,” said Weil. “And let’s be clear, we should be grateful to be in Massachusetts. The state has stepped up and to some degree as the federal government pulls back, the state ramps up its efforts and that makes these types of grants available. To some degree, it’s our job to participate with the state as much as we can, and obviously I want to be somewhat greedy for my own city.”
