Charged up: UVA unveils C'ville's first electric station
-
Allen Groves, associate vice president and University of Virginia dean of students, connects a Chevrolet Volt at the University’s central parking garage, while Kyle Smalkowski, (center) a fourth-year chemical engineering major who spearheaded the project, and Michael Phillips, program coordinator of Virginia Clean Cities, look proud.Photo by Dan Addison/U.Va.
A little over two years ago, UVA student Kyle Smalkowski founded the student organization START, Sustainable Transportation Advancement and Research Team, with hopes that the group would help fulfill a goal of his—to bring a publicly accessible electric vehicle charging station to Charlottesville.
On Friday, April 26, that goal got charged to life with the opening of a 240-volt charging station next to the elevators on the second level of UVA Central Grounds Parking Garage at 400 Emmet Street.
The station can only charge one electric car at a time for a $2 maintenance fee and receives its electricity from the grid of the garage, which gets some of its electricity from the 500-watt solar panel system on the roof. The station will draw about 7.2 kilowatts of electricity from the garage grid.
About six months before last week's unveiling, Smalkowski pitched his idea to Michael Phillips, project manager at Virginia Clean Cities, a nonprofit organization that promotes alternative fuels and vehicles, and Phillips jumped on board. Christian Speck, a fourth-year electrical engineering major, and Olivia Jeffers, a fourth-year civil engineering major, also helped out with the project, which received an $8,700 grant from the Green Initiatives Funding Tomorrow fund.
Phillips and Smalkowski’s passion for this initiative stems from their recognition of the benefits of electric vehicles.
“Electric vehicles give zero tailpipe emissions, you have the opportunity to use domestic fuel, you have the opportunity to use very clean renewable energies and reduce dependence on foreign oil," says Phllips. "There’s also a ton of implications for global warming.”
The first one to charge his car at the station, appropriately enough, was Jeffrey Sitler, the director of the Environmental Compliance Program in UVA's Environmental Health and Safety Department. Sitler brought in his Chevy Volt, which he has been driving for a year now on one gas fill-up.
Clearly, with only one charging station in town equipped to charge only one car at a time, Charlottesville won't be an electric car town any time soon. Indeed, cars pulling up to the Central Grounds Parking Garage station will also likely have to sit there for hours, as officials says it takes eight hours to charge a depleted battery.
However, Smalkowski and Phillips have high hopes, and they predict that we will be seeing an increase in the amount of electric vehicles around Charlottesville. Currently, according to Phillips, there are only 2,006 registered electric vehicles in Virginia, but that's a 700 percent jump from last year.
"This car charging station is just the beginning of what the future will continue to bring for clean energy in Charlottesville," says Smalkowski.
11 comments
This is great news. I was just at UVA last weekend and when I return in June for reunions I'll now bring my Chevy Volt! The $2 fee is very high however. Most EV drivers won't pay that for regular use.
Zero tail pipe emissions. Right. After the lithium is removed from the ground in Africa shipped to Canada and then to Japan and then here to the states. The emissions created in producing the batteries for these cars are far greater than a compact car with a small engine. The emissions are in the coal burning electric plants that charge these cars. Internal combustion with a small gas engine is actually better for the world environment than hybrids or electric cars. Google it.
I'm going to build an "electric car" with 2 tons of batteries in it. Of course it'll be just a regular 72 Pontiac station wagon loaded with batteries which I will charge for $2 and then take home and hook them to my inverter to power my house. Sure works out better than that $40K solar cell array I was planning to buy.
This is great news. I was just at UVA last weekend and when I return in June for reunions I'll now bring my Chevy Volt! The $2 fee is very high however. Most EV drivers won't pay that for regular use.
....... Most EV drivers wouldn't have bought that fire hazard of a car without an enother 8000 dollar grant from the government, So they get that and then expect to have the car recharged for free. Can we at least bill them for all the special equipment and training firefighters have to get when they get in an accident and there a 600 volt wires running around?
Lots of haters in this thread. I don't get why people feel so threatened by Electric Cars. Do they think there won't be performance? Look at the Mercedes SLS or Tesla S electric cars, which will absolutely wipe the floor with almost all cars but a 1.2 million Veyron.
Also, perhaps for some people. it's not about "saving the world" and therefore doesn't need to be associated with treehuggers. For many it's more about "saving a buck" because gas is so fucking expensive.
All you rednecks and old guard types need to stand down, this is the future, deal with it.
Mr. de Leon:
Fire hazard? Yes, high-voltage is dangerous. But compare it, please, to the risk of driving around sitting on a tank of ridiculously-explosive gasoline.
And it's 300V, not 600V (see http://gm-volt.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-16643.html).
If the EV doubters had been in charge all along we'd still be walking or riding horses.
http://www.polaris.com/en-us/gem-electric-car/Pages/Home.aspx
This is the true future of the electric car as a short distance errand runner and grocery getter. The attempt to make it a "drop in replacement" for the petrol fueled freeway cruiser is just another one of many "blowing green smoke up our arses" initiatives coming out of the rise in energy costs. The big heavy high powered electric car is a technical "tour de force", but its future, along with the future of all 30K miles per year personal driving lifestyle, is dubious. Non subsidized electric cars are not an economical alternative or an ecological alternative unless one has a child's view of electricity as something magic that comes out from a wall outlet :"sui generis".
The electric car owners are willing to pay sky-high prices for their cars [I did not know we have so many rich and/or movie stars in Evanston---a good ground for more taxes] with the knowledge that within a few years they will have to replace the battery at maybe $15,000. Also the towing companies will make a lot of money pulling them to the garage [I assume the mechanics will not then be able to fix them---just gas/charge them]. Of course the effective coal plant they use to power them will also be grateful.
If we can keep the owner buying the electric cars for maybe another 20 years, they may have worked out the problems and they will be at a price mere mortals can afford---and not simply trade off one non-renewable source for another and actually be efficient.
If we can keep the owner buying the electric cars for maybe another 20 years, they may have worked out the problems and they will be at a price mere mortals can afford---and not simply trade off one non-renewable source for another and actually be efficient.
The electric car owners are willing to pay sky-high prices for their cars [I did not know we have so many rich and/or movie stars in Evanston---a good ground for more taxes] with the knowledge that within a few years they will have to replace the battery at maybe $15,000. Also the towing companies will make a lot of money pulling them to the garage [I assume the mechanics will not then be able to fix them---just gas/charge them]. Of course the effective coal plant they use to power them will also be grateful.