Six US utilities form Electric Highway Coalition in Southeast, Midwest

[OldEVGuy]

https://electrek.co/2021/03/02/six-...ctric-highway-coalition-in-southeast-midwest/

Six US utilities form Electric Highway Coalition in Southeast, Midwest
Michelle Lewis
- Mar. 2nd 2021 1:27 pm ET

Six utilities today announced the formation of the Electric Highway Coalition. It’s a plan to ensure that electric vehicle drivers have access to a network of charging stations on major highway systems on the Atlantic coast, in the Midwest and South, and in the Gulf and Central Plains regions.

Here’s what the Electric Highway Coalition’s network will look like:

Image: TVA
The Electric Highway Coalition – American Electric Power, Dominion Energy, Duke Energy, Entergy Corp., Southern Co., and the Tennessee Valley Authority – will provide EV drivers with a network of DC fast chargers that can get drivers back on the road in around 20-30 minutes.
The utilities will each provide EV charging within their service territories. Coalition members are working to determine final charging station locations. They are considering sites along major highway routes with easy highway access and amenities.

Jeff Lyash, Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) president and CEO, said:

Together, we can power the electric road trip of tomorrow by ensuring seamless travel across a large region of the US. This is one of many strategic partnerships that TVA is building to increase the number of electric vehicles to well over 200,000 in the Tennessee Valley by 2028.
EV adoption will spur jobs and economic investment in the region, keep refueling dollars in the local economy, reduce the region’s largest source of carbon emissions, and save drivers and businesses money.

On February 3, as Electrek reported, the TVA and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation announced that they will jointly develop a statewide network of EV fast charging stations every 50 miles along the state’s interstates and major highways.
The Electric Highway Coalition is inviting more utilities to join as it seeks to extend the reach of its network, and also wants to work with other regional utility transportation corridor electrification initiatives.
The American Public Power Association reported in June 2020 that “there will be 10 to 35 million electric vehicles in the United States by 2030, a steep rise from the 1.5 million electric vehicles on US roads in 2020.”

Further, it reported:

An investment of between $75 billion and $125 billion in the electric power system will be needed by 2030 to serve 20 million electric vehicles.

 

[Thevanin]

That's a good initiative. I'm all for more chargers on highways. I didn't see any timeline for when they would actually have chargers every 50 miles though.

The one trip that I semi-regularly take is from central NC to NW PA. It's currently a massive pain due to the void that is WV. It looks like going up through Charleston to Cleveland might make that trip possible now.

 

[OldEVGuy]

That's a good initiative. I'm all for more chargers on highways. I didn't see any timeline for when they would actually have chargers every 50 miles though.

The one trip that I semi-regularly take is from central NC to NW PA. It's currently a massive pain due to the void that is WV. It looks like going up through Charleston to Cleveland might make that trip possible now.

The MME will be our first EV. When driving from Columbus to Florida, we often go through WV. Hopefully, a utility, or one of the charging infrastructure companies, will be installing more charging stations, so it‘s less of a concern to drive an EV through the state.

 

[mixduptransistor]

That's a good initiative. I'm all for more chargers on highways. I didn't see any timeline for when they would actually have chargers every 50 miles though.

Important to note that this isn't a joint venture, there's not going to be a new organization building and operating these charging stations. Each utility will be building and maintaining their own separate network of fast chargers. The partnership will be on the marketing and billing side. They will all operate under a common account/billing/app system to the public

So, it is likely that the rollout of this new "network" will be pretty uneven

 

[SteelMach]

This is awesome news! There are a lot of gaps in those utilities' service territories right now for CCS vehicles that could really stand to be addressed. As long as they focus on all highways, not just Interstates, they can really make a difference for EV adoption in their territories.

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