Western Massachusetts Electric Co.unveiled charging stations at the Springfield Community College Technology Park in Springfield and at the Courtyard Marriott Hotel in Hadley
By HARLAN LEVY
Special to The Republican
The age of electric cars may be inching into reality, and Northeast Utilities and its Connecticut Light & Power subsidiary have decided to take a major step to help it along by providing charging stations for plug-in vehicles in four municipalities, with plans to do so eventually in two-dozen other cities and towns.
NU announced this week that it is providing Level II charging station devices at no cost to the city of Torrington and the towns of Westport and Mansfield, with West Hartford expected to join the two-year project shortly.
Western Massachusetts Electric Co., a subsidiary of Northeast Utilities, also unveiled charging stations this week at the Springfield Community College Technology Park in Springfield and at the Courtyard Marriott Hotel in Hadley. A third location is planned for Pittsfield.
NU will also give a unit to financial services giant UBS in Stamford for its employees. The only requirement is that the municipalities and businesses that participate must install and maintain the chargers.
NU has already installed charging stations at its company offices in Berlin, Hartford, Springfield, and Manchester, N.H. NU’s Western Massachusetts Electric Co. subsidiary has one customer site installed and another planned. About 20 other municipalities and businesses served by CL&P are expected to participate in the initiative eventually.
What NU and CL&P get out of the deal is research data to ascertain market demand for such services.
“By gathering information from municipal and business customers, we can gain tangible experience to help guide future decisions about our infrastructure, our policies, and how we will ultimately serve all of our customers as EVs become more common,” CL&P President and Chief Operating Officer Jeff Butler said.
“By year-end, we expect to have a network of more than 30 charging stations in place and generating detailed meter data,” said Watson Collins, NU’s EV project manager. “We’ll have a robust picture of away-from-home charging levels to study along with home-based use as more EV drivers recharge overnight.”
NU also is testing Chevrolet’s plug-in hybrid Volt in collaboration with the Electric Power Research Institute of Palo Alto, Calif.
“It’s all about understanding how EV recharging impacts the electric utility system under a variety of conditions,” Collins said.
That breakdown of data is a necessary precursor to planning the region’s long-term EV infrastructure, CL&P officials explained.
“By anticipating and supporting the market for new plug-in EVs, we can all benefit from a cleaner, lower-cost and locally available fuel alternative,” Dan Esty, Connecticut’s environmental protection commissioner, said.