Pipcecil
Well-known member
I remember them getting the grant for the research and was so happy! It really would be nice to have something similar to the IH 5 project going in the northwest.
Unfortuantely, the grant was only for research so moving forward with implementation or taking action from their findings will take money from other sources. I do know that eVgo, the current opperators of the level 3 stations in Houston and Dallas do have plans to maybe (hopefully) put charges between their two areas of opperation - DFW and Houston, which would electricfy the IH 45 corridor. Unfortunately you can only use that service with a monthly fee, but if you are already using it in Houston or Dallas, you might as well get the benefit of going between the two!
The difficult part right now is 3 charging companies (4 kindof) and their particular agreements/arrangements:
eVgo has the rights for Houston area and Dallas area for Level 2 and 3 (biggest is of course level 3). Their main focus is Houston from those two. This would probably preclude other partners installing level 3 in those areas (eVgo probably has some kind of deal in place I imagine).
Blink's deal only serves DFW and Houston (it was probably part of their grant) - the focus seems to be more on DFW (based on # of evse).
ChargePoint deal is directly with the City of Austin and the surround areas (including San Antonio) the government grant basicly covers the Austin area. This is why the ONLY chargers you see in the Austin area are all chargepoint. Houston has some and DFW barely has a few.
GE - more independent, its piecemail at best, but they have a few stations in Houston, one in College Station and a few in DFW.
So you can easily see the alignment, there is overlap but not much:
DFW: Blink
Austin-San Antonio: ChargePoint
Houston: eVgo
Now try to get them to communicate to see who would be in charge of the Level 3's on the trinagle? HAHAH. Its going to be a rough road. Here is my guess. eVgo will do the IH 45 route and CCET will accept that as that portion. For the DFW to San Antonio will be the purchase of the Aerovironment level 3 or blink's level 3. I would say chargepoint would do it, but they don't have a level 3 yet. Houston to San Antonio - hmmm probably the same for the IH 35E corridor...we shall see how it turns out!
Unfortuantely, the grant was only for research so moving forward with implementation or taking action from their findings will take money from other sources. I do know that eVgo, the current opperators of the level 3 stations in Houston and Dallas do have plans to maybe (hopefully) put charges between their two areas of opperation - DFW and Houston, which would electricfy the IH 45 corridor. Unfortunately you can only use that service with a monthly fee, but if you are already using it in Houston or Dallas, you might as well get the benefit of going between the two!
The difficult part right now is 3 charging companies (4 kindof) and their particular agreements/arrangements:
eVgo has the rights for Houston area and Dallas area for Level 2 and 3 (biggest is of course level 3). Their main focus is Houston from those two. This would probably preclude other partners installing level 3 in those areas (eVgo probably has some kind of deal in place I imagine).
Blink's deal only serves DFW and Houston (it was probably part of their grant) - the focus seems to be more on DFW (based on # of evse).
ChargePoint deal is directly with the City of Austin and the surround areas (including San Antonio) the government grant basicly covers the Austin area. This is why the ONLY chargers you see in the Austin area are all chargepoint. Houston has some and DFW barely has a few.
GE - more independent, its piecemail at best, but they have a few stations in Houston, one in College Station and a few in DFW.
So you can easily see the alignment, there is overlap but not much:
DFW: Blink
Austin-San Antonio: ChargePoint
Houston: eVgo
Now try to get them to communicate to see who would be in charge of the Level 3's on the trinagle? HAHAH. Its going to be a rough road. Here is my guess. eVgo will do the IH 45 route and CCET will accept that as that portion. For the DFW to San Antonio will be the purchase of the Aerovironment level 3 or blink's level 3. I would say chargepoint would do it, but they don't have a level 3 yet. Houston to San Antonio - hmmm probably the same for the IH 35E corridor...we shall see how it turns out!