Name: Wheels & Watts: Powering Sustainable Municipal Workplace Commuting in the Northeast Region
Uploaded: 2025-04-22T18:30:08.077Z
Duration: 1 h 30 min 4 s
Description: Wheels & Watts: Powering Sustainable Municipal Workplace Commuting in the Northeast Region

Transcript for "Wheels & Watts: Powering Sustainable Municipal Workplace Commuting in the Northeast Region": Hello, everybody. Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. We're gonna start very soon. I see people joining. Welcome, everybody. We're gonna have a great presentation for everybody today. We're just gonna give it a few more seconds so, more folks are joining. Welcome in. Thank you so much for being with us today. We're gonna start very soon. Yeah. Well, we have a great program, so might as well get started. Hello, and welcome to Power and Sustainable Workplace Commuters in the Northeast Region as part of our Wheels and Watts webinar. My name is Rosa Mitsumasuskari, and I am with Plug in America. And today, we're gonna be talking a little bit about how an investment in sustainability, especially on EV charging and EV incentives, can lower cost, attract talent, and position your municipality as a leader. And real quick, this is the agenda for today. We're gonna give a quick overview of workplace EV charging and incentives. We're gonna have a couple of case studies, considerations about the right stations for your needs, also a quick overview of tax credits and grants and rebates, and, of course, a discussion about charge of work and even certification programs and the q and a at the end, for any questions you may have. Again, just wanna welcome the the folks that are coming in. And these are the speakers for today. That's me and the coordinator, Rosa, Mitsumasa, Scotty. And we, of course, have many organizations coming in because we're all here to support these efforts. I'm with Plug in America, and I'm gonna let all of the speakers introduce themselves as their sections come. About benefits of workplace charging. So just to give a little bit of a background, transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in The United States. And this is based on long term inventory analysis that took place for over twenty years by the Environmental Protection Agency. And transportation is not only the largest source of emissions, it's also the one with the only one with rising emissions, which is the the reason why we today, we have so much, low to zero emissions transportation technology programs. And as you know, we're advancing rapidly because we're trying to minimize the impacts of climate change and also local, minimize local pollutants in our community and improve, air quality. And as you probably know, electric vehicle driving is an upward trend. Even whatever you hear in the media, it's still growing. And a record of 1,300,000 EVs were sold in 2024. So every year, more and more EVs continues to get sold. And it's because a lot of it is incentives. We have federal incentives, regional incentives that have lower the purchasing and leasing costs. And most of these EV drivers today charge at home. 80% of more EV drivers currently charge at home because it's the most reliable and accessible way to plug your EV. You just go to sleep, wake up in the morning if you plugged it before bed, and there it is. It's charged. However, we know that 30% of Americans don't have, access to home charging because they live in apartment complexes, because they don't have a garage. They don't have a way to connect their vehicle to an outlet. That means that that creates a huge barrier, not just for charging, but for EVs in general. Many people are like, oh, I can't charge, so I'm not even gonna risk it. I'm not even going to consider an EV. That is why public spaces and workplaces are a huge opportunity to open EV charging for consumers. And, however, we know that public charging is still fairly unreliable. We know from recent studies, every year we hear this around 20% of public charges are broken. Pricing is all over the place. People are paying, by the mile, by the electricity that they consume. They have to pay different, modes of payment like credit cards, or you have to have a membership, or you have to have a a chip. So, it's it's sort of all over the place. And, of course, we cannot forget the charging deserts. There's a lot of places that if, you live in a county that is it's somewhat rural or, in in a state that hasn't embraced, public charging or in in the highway, there is just no desserts. Yes. Desserts would be great too. So knowing the public charging is a little unreliable, workplace charging can really be, an opportunity for people to have reliable access to EV charging. And, again, most people charge at home, of course, because it's the most reliable way. But the workplace could be a huge opportunity because, first of all, 73% of American commuters still drive to work and park there, giving a huge opportunity for people. And for those who don't have access to charge at home, it becomes their it can become their primary charging place. And we know now from the projections of, where we wanna be, driving EVs, we will need 1,300,000 workplace charging stations by 2030. And finally, why would a municipality want to offer EV charging? Generally speaking, employers who often EV charging, can promote a culture of sustainability and put a digital footprint on EV charging websites like Plugshare, like plugstar.com. There's many, websites that, offer, charging maps that you would show there. It's also known to, that whenever an, an organization offers commuting perks to their employees, it can increase, staff retention and, improve retention outcomes. And, also, employers, 50% of employers are this is based on a large surveys. We know that people highly prefer employers that offer, that have environmentally conscious practices. Practices. And, of course, as a municipality, if you offer EV charging, you can always, offer it to residents. So it's not just for employees, but also for residents, and they can have access for, be in the downtown area, for instance. Alright. Well, that was a quick overview. And now I'm gonna pass it to my colleague, Peter, and, who's gonna be talking a little bit about his case studies in Madison, New Jersey. So, Peter, please, join us, on stage. There we go. Rosa, thank you, and, thank, you for having us, at this, at this webinar. My name is Peter Fried. I'm the Madison in Madison, New Jersey. If you go to our first slide, you'll see a little background about the town. For those in other parts of New Jersey, should I flip the slides, or is someone flipping the slides there? Okay. And if there are questions that arise in this very quick presentation, please note, glad to help people and answer questions. Let's go to the next slide, please. There we go. A little background. Madison is, sort of between Summit and Morristown for those in New Jersey who don't know exactly where we are. We have a population of about 16,000 people, and we are a typical suburban bedroom community about thirty minutes from New York City. We do have two unique features though, or three, I should say. One is people in town because there are two universities, in town here, Drew and Fairleigh Dickinson. In addition to that, a very sort of unique advantage that we have is that we're one of, eight or nine, I think it's eight towns, municipalities in New Jersey that have their own municipal electric utility. That utility buys wholesale power off of the grid, and our utility in town owns and manages the entire distribution grid, sets the rates, and things like that. In addition, we've been fortunate to have a very supportive administration. They provide excellent support, and they work very closely with our green teams, the environmental commission, the climate action committee, the shade tree board, and the sustainable committee that I'm a member of. If we could go to the next slide. Okay. What we've done in Madison to promote EV growth was we started as much as about, I think it was about eight years ago, taking advantage of the, state. It pays to plug in grants. They were providing grants for EV chargers. And, in two different grant requests, we obtained 10 public dual port level two stations, and install them around town. One thing about those installations, which is a lesson for everyone is you have to think about where you wanna put them and why you're installing them. Are you installing them for the use of your residence? In our case, this effort was led by the business development team in town, and one of their main reasons was to attract EV drivers to come to restaurants, come to stores, come here from out of town. They were pretty successful at that. NJDEP has designated, Madison as one of, I think, five or six destination electric towns in New Jersey. We're currently installing and are about to have operational a pair of DC fast chargers. We provide a lot of EV information on the town website, an info hub, we call it, where we give people information much like what you'll hear today about incentives, about installation, about procedures in town, etcetera, etcetera. And, the borough does provide incentives, financial incentives for its own employees to buy EVs. It has incentives for residents to install chargers. Both those incentives, I know, are being used by employees in town and by, our residents. And, this coming Saturday, please pray for good weather, is electric vehicle expo, and, we have about, 30 different EVs that are going to be there for the public to look at, most brought by dealers, brand new, and it's a big event every year in Madison. If you go to the next slide, please. Okay. We keep track of our results. As I said, we were successful in, attracting people to our public charging network. We've been designated a destination electric town. We, are platinum certified for several buildings by the electric vehicle adoption leadership program, and we keep track of our, EV population in town. Back in 2019, we set an overly ambitious goal of having 1,200 EVs by the end of this year. We will fall short of that. It was a problem with, the goal we set, but at least we keep track of this. The good news, of course, is that New Jersey is on track to meet its goal of 330,000, electric vehicles on the road by the end of this year. And that's the important, statistic right there. And so with these metrics, we always ask ourselves, what can we do? Can we provide EV purchase incentives for our residents? We don't do that yet, but perhaps we should. And the other thing we do is we're trying very hard to electrify our municipal fleet and, use that as an example for the population, which we'll talk about on the next slide. There. We've made a good deal of progress in this regard. Starting in 2020, our police department moves to, hybrid, Ford interceptor vehicles. They now have five of them. For parking patrol and for building inspectors, we have Chevy Bolts. We have a a big electric lawnmower that, unfortunately, has me riding it in the picture. And now the slide has gotten real small on my screen, so I'm gonna speak from memory. And, we hope in the next month or so to order an electric, shuttle bus for our senior center. This is one of the 14 passenger shuttle buses that takes, wheelchairs in it as well. And, with that purchase, we will achieve our objective that is by the end of this year. 25% of our town's nonemergency mileage will be done with EVs. That's an objective we set about four years ago. We've seen an 18% fleet wide decline in c o two emissions from 2018 to 2023, and we've saved tons and tons. Here, it says 29 tons, of c o two emissions, compared to earlier years and $10,000 a year in fuel. The challenge going forward is, for all of us, of course, to move to our light duty trucks, our our dump trucks, our loaders, and things like that, as the technology keeps up with and enables those to be electrified. Let's go to the last slide. Next slide, please. There we go. This slide has a lot of words. I apologize for that. Madison has been designated, and recognized with by Sustainable New Jersey, one midsize town in the state for sustainability activity. And one thing that is the most important feature of our activity in Madison is we have instituted, an annual process for our, climate and decarbonization initiatives, an annual process where the council expects us to measure our carbon footprint and our various metrics every year. The council expects us to report those metrics every year, and the council expects us every year to come back with new recommendations. This is very important to have a process like this because it keeps every climate initiative from becoming a new political issue. You don't want that. You want to have, climate action to be a routine part of your municipal activities. And for right now, at least, we have achieved that. We keep track of our carbon footprint. You you can see it there, and you can see the big gray area that is our transportation, footprint and, emphasizes what, what Rosa spoke of earlier, about how that dominates the carbon footprint in the state. With that, I'll conclude, turn it over, to Brian, who will talk from Atlantic Highlands, and tell you, their story. Thank you so much, Peter, for that introduction. And, I have to say, on behalf of my community, Atlantic Highlands, I am absolutely covetous of your independent, electrical utility, for reasons that will become clear later in my presentation. So, thank you all. Good afternoon. My name is Brian Dougherty, and I serve as the borough council president in Atlantic Highlands. I was first elected to council back in 2022 and reelected this year. I was invited here today to offer the perspective of someone going through the EV charger installation process right at this very moment. It's a pleasure to be here. Before I regale you with that story, I'd like to take a moment to tell you about Atlantic Highlands. Located at the top of the Jersey Shore, our borough is a unique waterfront community of about 4,400 residents. One of our town's most prominent features is the Atlantic Highlands Marina, which is the largest municipally owned marina on the East Coast. Situated on Sandy Hook Bay, the marina supports commercial and recreational boating, local businesses, and serves as a key transit point for commuters via the SeaStreak Ferry, which provides direct high speed service to Manhattan for thousands of riders per weekday. Given its high traffic volume and central role in the community, the marina was a natural, though not our first, choice for our inaugural EV charger project. I'm here today to share the story of how this project came to be, how it started, the challenges we faced, and what we learned along the way. My goal is to provide insights that can help other municipalities looking to add EV infrastructure. Our project began in January 2022, just days into my first term, as I reached out to our chair of the environmental commission in Atlantic Highlands to set up a meeting to discuss adding electric vehicle supply equipment, EVSE, to our community. We immediately agreed that we wanted to support EV adoption, but at the time, we had little clarity on clarity on what we needed, where charges should go, or how we would fund them. From there, we started researching grant opportunities and soon applied for funding from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities. These state agencies provide programs designed to support municipal EV infrastructure, and we were fortunate to secure funding from both. We earned New Jersey DEP a pays to plug in grants, which help cover the cost of b v charging stations, and the b p u's e v tourism grants aimed at expanding charging options in areas that attract visitors. However, we soon hit a major roadblock. Those two grants were not stackable. In other words, we couldn't use both sources to fund the same project. This created a significant funding gap, especially for a small municipality like ours, which operates on a total annual budget of around $9,000,000. In the post pandemic era, finding additional funds for new infrastructure wasn't easy. We soon learned, however, that we would also qualify for additional funding through our electrical utility JCP and L's EV driven program for both the charging stations and make ready costs. While we toyed with the idea of installing both DC fast chargers as well as level twos, we quickly settled on two level two stations only. We then made a crucial decision that these stations would be revenue producing and developed a pricing model that would begin to offer a return on on our investment as soon as the first vehicle plugged in. After we crunched those numbers and successfully presented them to the borough administrator, the project came to mayor and council and was approved. As the adage says about real estate generally, EV charging stations are all about location, location, location. For our project, several locations were considered. We quickly learned that proximity to electrical service, the closer the better, made the project more affordable. If long trenching were required, especially under a main thoroughfare like our First Avenue, which is also a county road, the more expensive and time consuming the project would be. We ultimately chose the Atlantic Islands Marina adjacent to the Seastree Ferry Terminal for three dual port level two chargers. In our view, several factors made this an ideal location. High traffic volume. The marina serves commuters, boaters, residents, and visitors. It is the recreational hub for our community and close enough to our historic business district to ensure regular use of the chargers. Proximity to the ferry. Many travelers rely on electric vehicles for the first and last miles of their journey, so placing chargers near a major transit hub made sense. Visibility and accessibility. The marina location makes the chargers easy to find for both residents and visitors. Once we settled on the site, the real work began. Navigating permitting, coordinating with other stakeholders, utility companies, and managing the infrastructure upgrades needed to support the chargers. The Atlantic Highlands Marina is a utility of the board of of the borough of Atlantic Highlands. Excuse me. So it is managed by a harbor commission. Seastreak is a tenant of the harbor. The spaces we chose to use for our EVSE equipment are part of their lease. One great decision we made was involving the commission early on in the process. With that group on board, it made navigating some of our future challenges much more doable. A major challenge that accompanied our choice of location with these that these charging stations would be located in an AE flood zone. In our case, this was an AE 11 zone. We had to make sure that our charging stations were installed above design flood elevation or DFE. This is where we came to rely heavily on the expertise of our chosen installation company, Brian Electric, from whom you'll hear just in just a moment, and our engineering firm, CME Associates. The team at Brian Electric, particularly George Koutseridis, I know I just butchered your name, George. I'm sorry, but you can correct me when you come up in a moment, worked diligently with our engineers to come up with a solution that met DFE by about three inches. That was a happy day when that plan was approved by our construction code and electrical subcode officials. We had an approved budget, a location with approved permits, and a signed contract. Our charges would be installed and in use in no time. Right? Well, not quite. The final steps in the process would prove to be among the most time consuming and frustrating. At this point, it's mid December twenty twenty four, about five months ago, when engineers from our electrical utility assessed the location. About two weeks after that assessment, we learned that the service pole adjacent to the charging station site needed to be replaced, but the pole was owned by the cable company, not the electrical utility. Weeks passed before we were able to get the cable company to schedule pole replacement. And once the pole was in place, installation by Bryan Electric began. Now we were cooking. Right? Well, our replacement pole caught fire. Upper left. There's a you can see the singe marks. It turns out it's not a great idea when live wires touch directly touch a wooden pole. A few more weeks passed before we can get the new new pole installed and charger lens installation could be completed. Yet, as we are together here today on April 22, actually had some breaking news. Our chargers are being activated this afternoon. This was not a dramatic ploy. This was not a plan, but that's exactly what's happened. We are plugging them in as we speak. So this is, this is a monumental day for us. Our project took many twists and turns, and we learned several valuable lessons along the way. First and foremost, start with a feasibility study. Understanding the technical and financial needs upfront can save you time and money later. Figure out exactly what you want or better yet, what is achievable, and go for that. Don't stop until you get there. Engage stakeholders early. Working closely with state funding, new agencies, utility companies, and local organizations can really help you streamline approvals, funding, and build support for your project. On funding, be flexible with funding. As we learn, grants can be restrictive. Be as creative as you can with funding, and that's a key to success in this project. And, finally, number four, expect delays. Permitting, procurement, and installation, especially utility poles, can take longer than anticipated. Plan accordingly. Thank you all for your time and attention. I will be will be available later to answer any questions on this webinar you may have. Happy to pass this over to Kate. Hi, everybody, and thank you so much for having me. My name is Kate Crook. I'm the partner and engagement director with LinkWell. And, again, I'm so fortunate to be here to discuss a little bit more about EVSE hardware and software selections. We've already heard those acronyms kind of pop up throughout the conversation so far as Brian and Peter spoke about their experience putting in charging stations. So, I'm here, on the back on the side of as an EV manufacturer, AV hardware and software provider as well as an installation expert to talk about working hard or smarter not necessarily harder and making sure you pick the right hardware and software for your workplace for your municipality. So a couple things I want to go over very quickly is when you're choosing what type of hardware you want to pick for your location, for your workforce, for your municipality, you need to understand what types of vehicles you're going to be fueling. So, I'm getting ready to tell you a bunch of more acronyms to put into your your glossary. The first thing is when you talk about a hybrid vehicle. Hybrid vehicles don't have a plug they are fueled just with gasoline or fossil fuels. Then, there's a Plug in Hybrid also called PHEVs and all of this, acronyms they're really important as you start to build out your plan so it's really important for people to know them. So, a PHEV or a Plug in Hybrid Electric Vehicle runs on both a battery as well as gasoline. What you want to know about a plug in hybrid electric vehicle is that very often the batteries on those vehicles are smaller and can only be fueled with certain types of charging stations and then finally is my personal favorite the battery electric vehicle the BEV 100% electric vehicle also sometimes called a zero emissions vehicle or a ZEV. A lot of these acronyms come into play when you're looking for those grants and incentive programs so it's good to know which ones go with what. Knowing what type of vehicle is in your parking lot or is going to be in your parking lot helps you to choose what type of hardware infrastructure that you're going to pick. So, if you have all hybrid vehicles that are running on gasoline, electric vehicle charging infrastructure probably isn't right for you right now. However, if you have, people within your workplace who are switching and starting to use plug in electric vehicles PHEVs those kinds of vehicles can use level one or level two charging stations and we'll get into that in just a second. So, level one charging stations are basically a 110 volt outlet. So, you can plug in just regular one out 110 outlet that will charge a battery in about sometimes seventeen to twenty four hours. It's also called a trickle charge. It works especially if you're going to have a long long dwell time. The sweet spot especially in workplace charging is that level two charging station and level two charging stations can charge a vehicle in anywhere between, six to eight hours which usually equates to a work day. So, you're getting about 25 miles of charge for every hour at a level two charging station. The good thing about a level two charging station is it can charge all types of vehicles a plug in hybrid electric vehicle as well as a battery electric BH EV. And finally, the last type of hardware is that DC fast charger we heard Brian and Peter talk about those in their locations. DC fast chargers or level three chargers is that quick charge mentality it's very close to that gas station concept that a lot of non EV drivers are interested in but the reality is DCFCs don't always work for every type of vehicle. A plug in hybrid for example can't use a DC Fast Charger to charge the vehicle because the battery capacity is is too small and the power being put into the vehicle on a DC Fast Charger is too high. So, it's important to know that, the dwell time in your parking lot in your workplace is going to match the hardware you choose and the vehicles that are going to be fueling. And, what's really important is your software solutions. I always say work smarter not harder. So, when you choose software that goes into those level those level charging stations that you pick there's ways that you can capitalize and make sure that the software works for how you want it to work. There's private charging, for example, where you can restrict charging access to only approved drivers which for a workplace might be an important feature for you. You can do driver discounts where you can set customer pricing for different user groups. For example, if you're like our workplace, employees get to charge for free, but after hours when no one's in our parking lot, there is a fee to charge if people from the community want to use them. You can also promote fair access by setting limits on your charging stations. For example, a charging station will charge for a maximum of two hours per session or up to 10 kilowatts. Especially in an employee and workplace environment, you might want to be able to turn over those charging stations quickly so that everybody has an opportunity to charge at work. And then finally, an option that you can use through software which is something that the LinkWell team has on our BioLINK software is that load management where you can add more charging ports without increasing that utility infrastructure. So, the stations are going to adjust based on the available power at the site and then we can increase the power based on when the supply becomes available. And then finally, there's custom solutions. Software can help fit what your workplace needs into what your location is looking for. So, again, you can use that hardware and software or hardware that you've chosen and pick the software to do the hard work for you. And speaking of hard work, getting those charging stations in the ground is the hard part of it. And George is going to come up from Bryan Electric. We're so glad to partner with you, George, and you're the one who's always putting those chargers in the ground. So, take it away. Thank you for the introduction, Kate. So, yes, I'm here to talk about, site strategies, what to consider, what to anticipate, and overall, you know, try to foresee the unforeseeable. As Brian and Peter both mentioned in their examples, you know, sometimes it's not always right to the point as you want it to. So to break it down in a nutshell, the EV charging station install process is categorized in eight simple steps. The first is a consultation. So this is where you'll meet with an expert like myself or Kate, and review what are the goals. Right? Where are you trying to put the stations? What are you trying to accomplish with them? Do you need the level twos? Do you need fast chargers, etcetera? This can happen before site visit or at the same time of a site visit. And that's probably the most critical part because then at that time, that's when we're determining all the possible options, whether we use existing infrastructure, maybe from a municipal building or existing structure, or if we're gonna come off of a new service from the utility itself. At that point, we would then provide an estimate. The estimate, depending on the complexity of the project, could take anywhere from one to three weeks. So just being mindful of the time there to make sure that it's always, you know, appropriate for what your project is. And then at that time, you received the estimate, you get to review it and then execute a contractor purchase order. It's critical, especially for any incentives that the utilities might offer that if you hadn't already connected with them, that you do so at the time that you, execute your purchase order. So make sure the utility applications and make sure the coordination with the utility is there. And that way, they understand what is going on because these chargers are a significant amount of power. And as you'll see in a little bit, you know, we are going to take a lot of infrastructure, from the grid power to get those. Once material and design engineer is drawn, you can submit for permits. And then actual boots on the ground installations in most cases is only about one to four weeks of install. Sometimes it could go a little bit further if there is more, more stations or more complexity, but typically that's your your time of completion. So some other considerations that I wanna make sure are addressed are ADA flood and fire. So right now, ADA, there are no actual laws, but there are some guidelines to help facilitate a proper installation when you're considering ADA. Note that not every, stall has to have ADA compliance, but in certain locations, you wanna make sure you're accommodating for all. So here's two quick examples of a correct ADA installation and a incorrect installation. What you'll notice is it's important that the station is in the middle with the aisle between two stalls as opposed to being on the left or right hand side of the stall because, unfortunately, while this is good intentioned, the stall being, you know, away from the station prohibits anyone from being able to actually use it if they were in need. Another consideration is flood and design flood elevation. So as Brian mentioned before, his was in a flood zone, had to consider it. It's very unique. It's very case by case. But you can see the complexities from a simple design flood elevation that may be, in the top right. You see Atlantic Highlands. They only had to do a small elevation to the bottom right. You know, where the flood zone was incredible and you have to elevate the infrastructure over seven feet. So it's very, very valuable, very important to know before planning. If you are in a flood zone, Some other considerations to keep in mind are utility maps, understanding which utility you're in, for state incentives and federal incentives that we're about to talk about. Also keep in mind that there are some ArcGIS mappings that can help you understand if your location is in a zone that is eligible for state or federal funding. And the last piece of advice is, I always recommend everybody take a look at your local utilities capacity map. So for Jersey, there's PSE and G, JCP and L, ACE, a couple others. But, you know, take a look at these maps. They all have them if you just do a search for them, and you'll be able to see if your location, might require additional infrastructure on the utility side as well. So with all of that, I'm now gonna pass it off to Stan to talk about incentives. Thank you, George, for the introduction. And I'm going to talk about money money money, because, for every project that you deploy, you want to make sure that it's cost effective. So my goal is to show you the the savings, the and the incentives. So, there are many levels of incentives. You want to tap into federal tax credit. You want to have incentives from the state, from the utility. You want to create partnerships, with other companies so that you can share the cost of, of, EV infrastructure. If you install solar or other energy management projects, you can get, cheaper electricity. You can also consider workplace charging as revenue stream. And as Kate mentioned, after hours, you can offer your charging to the public. So, there are, lots of ways how how you can think about, revenues team. But I am going to focus now about the state and utility incentives and the federal tax credit. So, and because I'm in New Jersey, so I'll be a little bit biased for New Jersey. So there are, state grants and and more specifically, they are from two departments, from Department of Environmental Protection and from Board of Public Utilities, and both are state agencies. And what these grants cover, they cover charging hardware, five year networking fee, and five year warranty. And this is very good deal. But you have to remember the reason why the state is offering money is because they, want to have access, to the data. So, they have a list of prequalified charging stations, and network providers that have that capability and that are compliant. In dollar amounts, these incentives are, for all levels of charging. For level one, it is $750, and only DEP offers that. For level two, it's between 2,000 and 4,000 per port, and both DEP and and BPU offer that. And then also there are incentives for DC fast charging, and it is up to 50,000 per port. On the next slide, you can see, utility rebates. And in New Jersey, we have, four major utilities as, as, George showed on the map. PSENG, Jersey central power light, Atlantic City Electric, and small utility at North Orange and Rockland that also overlaps with New York state. These incentives, they cover, the cost of installation. So it's boring, trenching, cost of conduit, panels, but also service upgrades and transformers. The dollar amounts, depend on, whether we are talking about the consumer side or the utility side. So the consumer side is, downstream from the panel, and utility side is between the pole and the utility meter. These incentives vary depending on which utility we are talking about between 4,000 and $9,200 per port. So these are very generous, incentives. And for fast charging, these are even more. They are, 4,400 to 11,000. And, so, they are different, also whether it is utility side or customer side. Total limits apply. For example, PSE and G has a limit 7,500 per port, but only up to 4 per applicant. So this is important to to bear in mind. And, again, they require charging data sharing. It is paid as a statement credit. So, the the the money is refunded later. And then, we have federal tax credit. I apologize for the text which which overlays. There are two sources. One is the primary, the from IRS, and the other one is from Sustainable Jersey because Sustainable Jersey has very good information about direct pay or elective pay. So what is it about? It is not competitive grant. You don't have to apply. There are few qualifications, very simple. One of them is that, you have to be the original use that began, with the applicant. And but what is very important, is, the eligible census tract. So your project has to be in area that, that is eligible. And the tracks that are eligible after January 1 this year, there are more of them, not just in New Jersey but across the nation. So now we have, 1,067 tracks in New Jersey, and, the amount of credit is 6% for typical company. However, if, your organization has prevailing wage and apprenticeship, then the credit actually goes up to 30%, and it's up to hundred thousand per item, which is very, very generous. The limit is the 30%, and it is calculated from the total cost, which means charger and the make credit component, which in New Jersey is typically covered by, by the utility. The way how to claim the credit is either through the form eighty nine eleven or, and this is very important, as elective pay because now, thanks to the IRA, treatment, even organizations that do not pay tax, they are eligible for the tax credit. So that's about the incentives. And, now I'm going to, introduce Lisa Lee from Easyride, and she will introduce you to the EVA certification. Lisa, take it away. Thanks so much, Stan, and hello, everybody. As Stan said, my name is Lisa. I'm the director of sustainability programs here at EZ Ride. We're, one of the eight local transportation management associations in New Jersey offering technical assistance and helping to promote EVs and workplace charging. So, I'm gonna tell you a little bit about the EV Adoption Leadership Program. This is a national certification program. Not only does the program offer you this certification, but it also has a lot of wonderful resources embedded in the site. And I think someone's gonna help me put that up in the chat. So, EV AL EVAL supports clean workplace transportation so as a municipality or public agency installing EV chargers in your community is a great thing not only for your employees but for your residents we know that a lot of people don't all live in homes where they have garages or driveways where they can charge their EVs so part of encouraging EV adoption, you know, to help reduce those transportation emissions that Rosa spoke about at the very beginning is enabling people to go green with their commutes and to be able to find a place to charge. So for those who don't live in a home a single family home having chargers in the community is great for residents and it's also really great for your staff It demonstrates that you support our environment and it indicates that you value sustainable transportation. So EVAL is a national workplace charging program. It's got educational content, it has outreach materials as well as technical assistance activities that help to increase EV charging available in our nation. Employers from all industries of all sizes including state, county, municipal, schools, community based organizations, non profits, and tribal entities are all eligible to apply. The only organizations that cannot apply are those that are purely focused on adding EV charging stations for their fleet so there really is a focus here on helping to encourage your employees to commute in a green way and it also provides that services for your residents so there's four levels of EVAL certification from bronze, silver, gold, and platinum. And I want to point out that it's actually you only need 15 points to get to bronze. So even if you haven't yet started the process, you may be eligible. I was able to help, one of the communities, Washington Township in New Jersey. They got all the way to a silver level just because they had such wonderful HR policies and goals for their township that even though they hadn't yet, installed the EV chargers, they were able to get up to the silver level. And so that's one thing that all of our partners here would be happy to help you with, specifically Plug in America and Easyride. And we can also refer you to the other TMAs if needed in your state or even in your county so the certification goes over several different types of categories. First, it looks at how are your employees engaged? Do you have education? Do you survey your employees about whether they have interest in trying out a form of green transportation whether that's an e bike and e scooter or an electric vehicle it also takes a look at what are the policies that you have do you promote the use of green transportation or public transit? And then it goes to the second level in looking at your organization's planning, your strategies, and for the future. It looks at if you are incentivizing your employees to adopt e mobility. For example, do you offer, credits to them or maybe, a payment if they take transit or if they purchase an EV or even rent an EV when they're going on vacation or for business and then it looks at how you are expanding access to EV charging stations you may not even have a worksite All of your employees may be working remotely, but perhaps when they do come, into your office site maybe you've made arrangements with your partner in the community, another business who has EV charging stations that can be accessible for your staff. And then finally it looks at different types of innovative programs that you're involved in where you are showcasing your leadership in sustainability. So it's a very easy process. Plug in America and EZ Ride we would be glad to hold your hand and walk you through this. All you have to do is register it's an online application very simple and the nice thing is you can start and you can stop and you can come back to it whenever you're ready so you know there really is a strategy on how to maximize your level and we would be glad to do that I think someone's going to put something in the chat. There's even the questions that are part of the application that you can look at in advance to make sure that you get the highest level. So, as providers, network partners, we can provide you with those questions, we can give you a spreadsheet so that you can even plan how many points you're going to get, we can give you survey templates, we can give you advice, and that is really the key. Right? We are the experts at this. I've had communities who wanted to do this on their own. They should have probably gotten, like, a silver or even a gold recognition but because they just decided to do it on their own they weren't able to maximize their points versus other communities like I'm telling you they didn't even have chargers and we got them all the way to silver so please reach out to us so that we can help you get the highest level. The other thing you can do is if you have only just begun this process right you can make a pledge to charge at work. So there's a site someone will put up and the site also has lots of great technical resources in it. We are all here to help you, but make a pledge to charge at work at this site and you can get a one point. So next steps go back and talk with your town council your municipal council think about your goals and your vision we all know that there's been an impact on our nation, on the world, because of all of the different types of transportation emissions, as well as other sources of climate change. Talk to your your leaders. Talk to your constituents. Think about where you might be able to put EV charging stations. Maybe it's at your library. Maybe it's your town hall. Maybe it's your recreation center, or maybe it's downtown. And then contact these wonderful people that are here. LinkWell, Brian Electric, EZ Ride, and Plug in America. We're here to help you, and we wanna help you get certified. Thank you so much. These are a lot of the different companies that have already gotten certified. I know in New Jersey alone we have 122 organizations, already certified. Last I checked we were the national leader. So we want to keep going up and up. I'm gonna turn it back to Rosa. She's gonna lead us and we're gonna take some questions and answers. So, please, look at the top of your screens, go to the q and a, type in your questions. We still have, about eight minutes, and we're gonna do our best to help you. Thank you so much, Lisa, and thank you so much for all of our wonderful speakers. We had such a comprehensive presentation today. So we're gonna move to the q and a, and I invite all of the other speakers to come and, join us on stage as well. And if you in the audience have any questions, please please submit them on the q and a section. So there was one question that I wanted to address. And I'm sorry. If you're not speaking, please put yourself in mute so we don't have any, feedback. But from Keith, there is a a comment that it seems, like a question. I would like to ask about site or net liability insurance, and I wanna pass that to George. I I for some reason, I'm I'm unable to read the full question. But, George, can you please read the question and answer that since you are on the technical side? Yeah. Absolutely. So the question is for, I would like to ask a site owner liability and insurance question. For example, let's say someone is plugged into the charger, and then during that session, the charger malfunctions and the customer's car is damaged. Who is liable? Is it the station owner? If so, what has been the average insurance premium increase on the site owner's insurance? So a great question. It I would say it's case by case. I believe there are certain things that can go into it. It's definitely gonna be an insurance claim of some sort. But my my biggest advice is that as the station owner or the site host, review all the agreements that you have in place with the manufacturer, with the software provider, with your installer, and just review all the documents to see, who who would be held liable for it and then ultimately try and combine them in whatever case with the insurance claim. It's definitely a sticky situation, but, you know, the best the best place to start is with the agreements you have in on black and white. Thank you so much, George. There's another question. How did Atlantic Highlands decide on a price per kilowatt hour? And I will let Brian answer that question. Yes. Thank you, Marlon, for the for that question. We we give a a lot of thought to our pricing model, and one of the things that we took into consideration is because it is a commuter location, we're charging a session fee, a flat fee of $10 per per day. So if the the three or the four major ferries into Manhattan for the morning commute leave at 7AM, seven thirty PM, and and the last one leaves at 09:10. So if anybody plugs in before 9AM, they charge a flat fee. We charge them a flat fee of $10 per day, and then there's an overage beginning at 06:30PM. So it's a a, I forget what it's called. It's a it's an overtime fee, essentially, of 15¢ per minute to encourage people to unplug, to come home and unplug and leave the chargers available for evening users and residents. We then have a $2 per hour, regular fee. So it's not a kilowatt hour. It's it's it's per, you know, per sixty minutes. And then overnight, to encourage residents to charge, inexpensively, we charge $1 per hour. So a lot of thought went into our pricing model, and, George, for Vita Electric was quite helpful in helping us come up with that with with those. Next question. Brian, I can add to that too. That's something when we talked about when I was talking about software is that as you look at the goals of what your charging stations are are trying to do, are they trying to encourage a certain type of behavior and if that is incentivized very often by using dollars, you want to make sure that the software that you pick is able to make those types of modifications whether it's time of use, like you had mentioned, overnight charges may be different than daytime use. So that's something you definitely wanna talk to your partners, whether your install partners, your hardware, your software providers as you continue to develop your plan so that you can make sure that you could actually implement those types of changes throughout the day, throughout timing, throughout driver groups, to make those, in your instance, to be able to get that return on investment that you've already worked out. Thank you so much, Brian and Kate. And there's another question that just came up from Jennifer. She says, I'm with a recreation organization with properties in areas with limited grid capacity and little to no cellular capacity. We have been using non networked charter chargers for this reason. Does anyone have experienced success installing smart network chargers in remote areas? I will let, George and Kate speak to that, please. And anyone really in the panel that wants to speak to that because, it's more of a technical question. Yeah. Absolutely. So, I mean, the biggest thing is, remote locations can be tough. If we are able to get any kind of cellular signal, if it's just because it's such a remote area, a lot of times we can do what's called a cell repeater, which can help boost the signal and, you know, give it just that little bit that it needs in order to actually connect. We've seen that to be the most successful avenue, especially if it's in, like, a garage or if it's, you know, somewhere where it can, you know, it's a little too dense, maybe a foresty area. If we can bounce the signal off of some other areas to get that stronger signal, that can help a lot with it. Or also just trying to see if we can relocate it to a better networked area. Kate, any input on your side? I don't have a lot extra. It's just part of that site assessment. So as you're starting to build out the plan, this is something that your professionals are going to come out and and assess for at the time saying and to, to George's point, there might be a way where if you just move the charging station into a different location within the same realm, it might work a little bit better. But that's something that any good contractor is going to make sure that they do that as part of the site assessment to make sure that your location is ready for that type of signal that it needs to connect. Yeah. And I'll I'll just add one other little note. So we have these fancy little readers here that can actually help us determine the exact signal strength. So, make sure that when you have a site visit, that your installer or whoever you're meeting with has one of those, and we can determine that right then and there to see will the signal work or not. Thank you so much George and Kate for those great answers. And we are almost out of time. So one more question about the certification of eval in other states. So Lisa, please let us know a little bit about that. Yeah I put something in the chat in case we run out but, this is a national recognition from the U. S. Department of Energy so no matter what state you're in, it's it's an opportunity to demonstrate your commitment to sustainability whether that's your organization or for your employees and residents. A lot of us who have gotten certified have also been invited to be part of webinars like this, so we can bring attention to your efforts and your work as a sustainable workplace, as a champion, and I think some of the other things are that you know as you apply for further grants maybe if your state has like electric vehicle grants you are able to say look I've taken the plunge I'm committed we are already doing this and I know like for us when we help communities apply for grants it's always a plus point to show that you're already living what you believe in you tend to be able to attract more grant funding because the funders know that you're serious. So I think money is always a great thing for communities and organizations. So anything else, rest of the team? Yeah. I could say, Lisa, thank you so much. That's such a great point. So just as a background, eval certification was designed inspired by other certifications like, the lead certification that brings attention to, the build environment and sustainability. So anybody that walks into a building, sees LEED certified, gold LEED certified, they know what it means and what it knows. It brings a lot of attention to the subject. Even certification is similar in that way where it brings a lot of visibility to employers that certification can help you with grants can help you pursue other funding opportunities to showcase your commitment to providing zero emissions transportation for your employees and also provides a lot of marketing. We do a lot of highlights for employers, so a lot of good publicity, free publicity, which is great, and also a lot of resources, for program implementation. So for instance, you don't know where to start in engaging with your employees, there are survey templates. You don't know where to start looking for, programming implementation policies, for instance, because you're gonna try to figure out, okay. So who's gonna charge, in this spot and when? We have those resources. How do you talk about electric vehicles with your employees? We have those resources. So that's what EVA certification does. Gives you visibility, helps you, with grants, helps you with your employees' program implementation and a lot of education. Amy, if you have any questions, I know that we're a little bit past time, but, I just wanna thank you all very much for attend attending today's webinar. And, again, thank all of my colleagues here present. And if you have any questions, please let us know. We're gonna be following up, with recordings and resources. So thank you so much, and have a great rest of your day. Thanks, everyone. Happy Earth Day. Thank you. Happy Earth Day. Happy Earth Day. Thank you. Brian, I hope everything goes swimmingly. Bye, everyone. Bye.