A new kind of ‘fuel’ station at restaurants and movie theaters

Two years ago, iT was difficulT to find an electric car charging station in Dallas. These days, they’re all over the place.

Some of the more common are Blink charging stations, installed by parent company Ecotality. The company has installed more than 350 chargers in DFW in a little over two years, says area sales manager Dave Aasheim.

“We try to find locations where people are going to park their cars for an hour, maybe two hours,” Aasheim says. “We’re not putting them in places like gas stations. We’re putting them in places where you want to be.”

Shopping centers, libraries and parks are some of the spots Ecotality has chosen. It also has formed a partnership with Kroger — the Mockingbird and Greenville store has a charging station — and soon plans to place chargers at the Frisco Ikea store.

Ecotality began seeking out locations in 2009 when it was awarded a $99.8 million EV Project grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to help build the charging station infrastructure. The company has spent $115 million on infrastructure in addition to the grant, Aasheim says.

One of the deterrents to people driving electric cars is “range anxiety,” or fear of running out of charge in the middle of a drive. The electric Nissan Leaf, for example, can travel only 75 miles on a full charge.

So one of Ecotality’s goals is to provide plenty of charging spots for current customers.

“Most people are going to get a majority of their charge at home, but [charging stations] give them some range,” Aasheim says. “Every hour you’re plugged in puts about 12 to 15 miles of range back onto your battery — similar to if you see your cell phone getting low on charge, you plug it in for a few minutes to give it a boost.”

Blink station customers spend $1-$2 per hour to charge their cars.

The Hotel Palomar at Mockingbird and Central sought out a Blink charging station in 2011. The hotel’s director of sales and marketing, Sam Tucker, read an article about the EV Project noting that Dallas would be a focus area.

“We’re always looking for ways we can cut our carbon footprint and be first in industry in terms of earth care,” Tucker says.

Following the Blink installation, Tesla Motor Group called asking if it could install a modification and another charging station at

What’s the benefit of a smart meter’s ‘intelligence’?

3 million smart meters Oncor has installed since March 1, 2009, replacing 50-year-old technology with meters that show electricity use in real time (view your usage at smartmetertexas.com)

7 million service orders Oncor has completed remotely, such as meter re-reads, service disconnects or reconnects, because smart meters automatically alert utilities to service disruptions

35 million

Driving miles Oncor employees have consequently avoided, saving 2.9 million gallons of fuel and preventing more than 28,500 tons of CO2 from being released into the environment

14 million

Annual reduction in driving miles Oncor expects

23

Percentage of power outages Oncor has restored during non-storm periods since March 2012 without a customer ever reporting the outage

Source: Oncor the Palomar for Tesla drivers.

“The first year we had one guy come up from Houston with a Tesla, and now everybody in town who has a Tesla knows we have a charging station,” Tucker says.

Palomar guests can “fill up” at the charging stations for free, and so can Exhale Spa visitors and Central 214 diners. Between summer 2012 and summer 2013, a little more than 30 electric cars charged up at the Palomar stations.

“A guy who’s the chairman of a financial company always parks here and eats here because he knows we have it,” Tucker says.

Half Price Books was the first retailer in Dallas to install a charging station in September 2010. It purchased its own before the grant money was more widely available.

“We’ve always considered ourselves a very green company, and when the Chevy Volt was first coming out, we thought people obviously need incentives to use these cars, so we decided to lead the way and hope other retailers in Dallas would follow suit,” spokeswoman Emily Bruce says.

Thirty people used its charging station in 2010, Bruce says, “and so far this year, we’re up to 409. I think that now more electric vehicles are readily available, so there’s more of a need for it.”

Half Price Books doesn’t charge customers to use its station. It takes four hours for an electric car to charge completely, Bruce says, and most Half Price Books customers aren’t shopping that long, “but they can stay for an hour and get enough of a charge to get home or wherever they’re heading.”

Ecotality is collecting data on its Blink chargers to find out which chargers are used most. Right now, it appears that restaurants, movie theaters, grocery stores and similar “destination locations” are most popular, Aasheim says.

Ecotality is seeing an overall 11 percent increase in usage of public stations since this time last year, he says, and that number will only rise. For the last couple of years, only two electric cars — the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf — were major players in the market, Aasheim says, but by the end of 2013, drivers will be able to choose from 23 electric cars.