In November of 2021, Nicole Fox, Executive Director of the Morristown Parking Authority, and Greg Deal, Director of Facilities for the Morristown Parking Authority, discussed with Hayley Berliner, Clean Energy Advocate with Environment New Jersey, to better understand their obstacles and advice on electric vehicle charging installation.
Morristown’s leadership, as the county seat, does not disappoint on electric vehicle charging stations. Currently, the town boasts 2 chargers in every garage and 3 in their newest facility. Furthermore, the Parking Authority plans on further increasing their charging infrastructure within the following years to keep up with its rising demand. However, as they discussed, the demand was not always there.
Around four or five years ago, Morristown began to install electric vehicle chargers as a “pilot program”. The first chargers came in response to a state program where the town was able to lease, for free, electric vehicles for town use. After the lease ended, residents started requesting public electric vehicle chargers in their numerous garages. The town’s charging infrastructure therefore hinged initially upon town demand, and later the demands of numerous residents. This demand has continued and is now calling for more electric vehicle charging stations. Due to their history of installing electric vehicle charging stations, Morristown has a more knowledgeable outlook on the obstacles facing municipal charging station installation.
They explained that the first thing municipalities should do in the installation process is to connect with their local power company. From their experience, sourcing power to the building or area is one of, if not the largest, costs of the entire process because most buildings or locations do not have enough power capacity, especially for a larger number of chargers. While the dual-chargers (two ports) they purchased from JuiceBar cost around $5,000 each without grants or incentives, their installation cost was around $11,000 per charger. Collaborating with your power company and understanding the cost and plan of action is the first major hurdle.
When Morristown began their “pilot program” for charging stations, they decided not to charge users for their usage of the stations. However, in the current, higher demand electric vehicle market, municipalities like Morristown are more in favor of having a paid system for charging. This can be set up, they explained, using a company which specializes in electric vehicle payment options. Additionally, with the data supplied from the payment, municipalities will be better able to track the charger’s hourly usage, and potentially even power usage, depending on the company. Deal noted that many companies use a sub-meter system to record both sessions and power usage separately from the larger power unit. Therefore, by “charging to charge”, municipalities can help cover a part of the installation fees as well as being supplied with accurate and varied data for their records and consideration.
While charging installation is growing in demand, a big obstacle for many towns are the high starting costs for total charger purchase and installation. For Morristown’s first installation phase 4 to 5 years ago, there was less funding and grants available. Today, however, they both noted that there is more public and private funding accessible to municipalities and that they plan on taking advantage of some of these opportunities during their upcoming installations.