EV Charging Stations Downtown Warsaw Now Available
October 18, 2022 at 12:12 a.m.
EV Charging Stations Downtown Warsaw Now Available
By David [email protected]
Monday morning, representatives of the city, Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce, Michiana Area Council of Governments and Zimmer Biomet gathered near the corner of Main and Buffalo streets for a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the charging station there. The other station is in the city parking lot south of Expressions on Buffalo Street.
For Warsaw Assistant Planner Bekah Schrag, the ribbon-cutting was a moment she had been working toward for some time.
“I’m so excited! I’m so excited that the service is available for electric vehicle charges in this area and that Warsaw is moving forward with providing other opportunities besides gasoline for transportation,” she said.
The EV charging stations were the first time Schrag has been involved with implementing the stations.
“It’s been really cool to learn and understand how electric vehicle charging stations go in and like all of the different electrical and hardware that goes into it, and considering ADA requirements and all of the different levels of modes of transportation that you have to think about,” she said.
Assuming the City Council approved the ordinance on final reading Monday night, Schrag said the city will have the ability to charge for some of the city’s costs.
The funding for the charging stations came from a couple grants and the city’s investment, including a $18,000 grant through the Michiana Area Council of Governments (MACOG) from the Indiana Volkswagen Environmental Mitigation Trust Program. As part of the grant agreement, the city agreed to install EV charging stations. Part of the grant also requires that the city provide free charging for the first two hours for the first two years, and the city has to keep the charging stations up and running for a minimum of five years, Schrag said.
Zimmer Biomet also made a $10,000 donation toward the charging stations.
Dustyn Arney, Zimmer Biomet vice president, operations, said, “It’s all part of our sustainability initiative to help the community and kind of lead the way for environmental efforts.”
Alex McIntyre, Zimmer Biomet global real estate project manager, said, “Zimmer Biomet was a partial funder of this and there’s a lot of interest from our employee base for having renewable energy generation for our buildings, for our transportation, for our employees, and so this is an opportunity to partner with the city to provide a test pilot for our campus as well as hopefully a template to what we can put up at our own buildings.”
Leah Thill, senior environmental planner with MACOG, said MACOG helped to write the grant which secured $18,000 for both stations from the Indiana Volkswagen Environmental Mitigation Trust Program that helped with a significant portions of the costs.
“We’ve also been assisting with the implementation. We purchased the hardware. We’ve assisted with the design of the stations and helping with the ordinance to and everything to be drafted for the whole project,” she said.
Thill said they received funding for 10 stations throughout the region, “which was very exciting.” There’s eight different grantees which includes places like the town of Culver, city of Plymouth, Goshen and Elkhart. “Many different places around the region, these have now popped up,” she said.
Most of the charging stations in the region are now installed and/or operational. They all will be completed by the end of the year.
MACOG is assisting other towns and cities to get the EV charging stations.
“We have some federal funding that we will be awarding to Nappanee, which currently does not have any charging stations, as well as the city of Goshen to install a fast-charging station, which will charge many times faster than the unit in Warsaw,” Thill stated.
The stations in Warsaw are a Level 2 charger, which Thill calls a “destination charger” because they’re intended to charge while the driver goes and does other things like work, lunch or shop.
“You get about 25 miles per hour compared to a fast charger where you may get 200 miles per hour or more, so there’s a pretty big difference in those. And those are more designed for long highways, interstates or long-distance travel, where as this is more for a destination like this where you’re going to be here for a while,” Thill said.
MACOG can help cities and towns in the region find funding opportunities for EV charging stations.
City Planner Justin Taylor said the charging stations could attract people to the downtown. “They can plug in for a couple hours and shop. If someone chooses to stay plugged in longer than that, they’ll be alerted and then there will be a small fee for those hours after that,” he said.
Two parking spaces are reserved specifically for the charging stations.
“We strategically picked these spots in our downtown so that they’d be close to all of the amenities in the downtown, but we’re really sensitive to not losing parking in the downtown. But with the prevalence of electric vehicles picking up, it made sense to have spots dedicated to them,” Taylor said.
Mayor Joe Thallemer said, “Obviously, people are buying electric cars and we have very minimal infrastructure here. Thanks to the grant from the Volkswagen settlement, this is pretty much a no-brainer.”
Thallemer also noted that he drove by Monday morning and some guy was already using the charging station. Before the ribbon-cutting, Nathan Burton was using it to charge up his Tesla Model 3.
“It’s super convenient because otherwise I’d have to charge at home, which is really, really slow. So if I charge overnight at home, it probably gets you 60 miles of range for the whole night, where this will do that in two hours, so it’s a lot faster,” Burton said.
He said if he runs his Tesla down to 15 to 20%, it would take about eight hours to recharge it fully. Burton has had his car for only two months. After charging his car Monday, it went from about 20% charged to 52%.
Burton said other than at his home, the only other EV charging stations in Warsaw that he knew of are the city’s two charging stations downtown. “So I was really glad to have this because charging at home is kind of a hassle sometimes so this will be really nice. There’s no super charger in Warsaw. You have to go to Fort Wayne or South Bend and that will charge you up in 10 to 15 minutes and that’s great,” he said.
Compared to his previous vehicle, which used gasoline, he said the electric vehicle was a little more to think about, “but it’s really surprisingly not a pain. If you plug in when you get home, if you make that a part of your routine, I mean it’s a lot more convenient than stopping at a gas station. I just plugged in, go up to the office for the last two hours, come back and it’s got more charge on it. The only thing really to think about is road trips,” Burton said.
Thill said electric vehicles are the present.
“They’re clearly here and we just need to make sure that we plan pro-actively for the infrastructure,” she said.
Monday morning, representatives of the city, Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce, Michiana Area Council of Governments and Zimmer Biomet gathered near the corner of Main and Buffalo streets for a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the charging station there. The other station is in the city parking lot south of Expressions on Buffalo Street.
For Warsaw Assistant Planner Bekah Schrag, the ribbon-cutting was a moment she had been working toward for some time.
“I’m so excited! I’m so excited that the service is available for electric vehicle charges in this area and that Warsaw is moving forward with providing other opportunities besides gasoline for transportation,” she said.
The EV charging stations were the first time Schrag has been involved with implementing the stations.
“It’s been really cool to learn and understand how electric vehicle charging stations go in and like all of the different electrical and hardware that goes into it, and considering ADA requirements and all of the different levels of modes of transportation that you have to think about,” she said.
Assuming the City Council approved the ordinance on final reading Monday night, Schrag said the city will have the ability to charge for some of the city’s costs.
The funding for the charging stations came from a couple grants and the city’s investment, including a $18,000 grant through the Michiana Area Council of Governments (MACOG) from the Indiana Volkswagen Environmental Mitigation Trust Program. As part of the grant agreement, the city agreed to install EV charging stations. Part of the grant also requires that the city provide free charging for the first two hours for the first two years, and the city has to keep the charging stations up and running for a minimum of five years, Schrag said.
Zimmer Biomet also made a $10,000 donation toward the charging stations.
Dustyn Arney, Zimmer Biomet vice president, operations, said, “It’s all part of our sustainability initiative to help the community and kind of lead the way for environmental efforts.”
Alex McIntyre, Zimmer Biomet global real estate project manager, said, “Zimmer Biomet was a partial funder of this and there’s a lot of interest from our employee base for having renewable energy generation for our buildings, for our transportation, for our employees, and so this is an opportunity to partner with the city to provide a test pilot for our campus as well as hopefully a template to what we can put up at our own buildings.”
Leah Thill, senior environmental planner with MACOG, said MACOG helped to write the grant which secured $18,000 for both stations from the Indiana Volkswagen Environmental Mitigation Trust Program that helped with a significant portions of the costs.
“We’ve also been assisting with the implementation. We purchased the hardware. We’ve assisted with the design of the stations and helping with the ordinance to and everything to be drafted for the whole project,” she said.
Thill said they received funding for 10 stations throughout the region, “which was very exciting.” There’s eight different grantees which includes places like the town of Culver, city of Plymouth, Goshen and Elkhart. “Many different places around the region, these have now popped up,” she said.
Most of the charging stations in the region are now installed and/or operational. They all will be completed by the end of the year.
MACOG is assisting other towns and cities to get the EV charging stations.
“We have some federal funding that we will be awarding to Nappanee, which currently does not have any charging stations, as well as the city of Goshen to install a fast-charging station, which will charge many times faster than the unit in Warsaw,” Thill stated.
The stations in Warsaw are a Level 2 charger, which Thill calls a “destination charger” because they’re intended to charge while the driver goes and does other things like work, lunch or shop.
“You get about 25 miles per hour compared to a fast charger where you may get 200 miles per hour or more, so there’s a pretty big difference in those. And those are more designed for long highways, interstates or long-distance travel, where as this is more for a destination like this where you’re going to be here for a while,” Thill said.
MACOG can help cities and towns in the region find funding opportunities for EV charging stations.
City Planner Justin Taylor said the charging stations could attract people to the downtown. “They can plug in for a couple hours and shop. If someone chooses to stay plugged in longer than that, they’ll be alerted and then there will be a small fee for those hours after that,” he said.
Two parking spaces are reserved specifically for the charging stations.
“We strategically picked these spots in our downtown so that they’d be close to all of the amenities in the downtown, but we’re really sensitive to not losing parking in the downtown. But with the prevalence of electric vehicles picking up, it made sense to have spots dedicated to them,” Taylor said.
Mayor Joe Thallemer said, “Obviously, people are buying electric cars and we have very minimal infrastructure here. Thanks to the grant from the Volkswagen settlement, this is pretty much a no-brainer.”
Thallemer also noted that he drove by Monday morning and some guy was already using the charging station. Before the ribbon-cutting, Nathan Burton was using it to charge up his Tesla Model 3.
“It’s super convenient because otherwise I’d have to charge at home, which is really, really slow. So if I charge overnight at home, it probably gets you 60 miles of range for the whole night, where this will do that in two hours, so it’s a lot faster,” Burton said.
He said if he runs his Tesla down to 15 to 20%, it would take about eight hours to recharge it fully. Burton has had his car for only two months. After charging his car Monday, it went from about 20% charged to 52%.
Burton said other than at his home, the only other EV charging stations in Warsaw that he knew of are the city’s two charging stations downtown. “So I was really glad to have this because charging at home is kind of a hassle sometimes so this will be really nice. There’s no super charger in Warsaw. You have to go to Fort Wayne or South Bend and that will charge you up in 10 to 15 minutes and that’s great,” he said.
Compared to his previous vehicle, which used gasoline, he said the electric vehicle was a little more to think about, “but it’s really surprisingly not a pain. If you plug in when you get home, if you make that a part of your routine, I mean it’s a lot more convenient than stopping at a gas station. I just plugged in, go up to the office for the last two hours, come back and it’s got more charge on it. The only thing really to think about is road trips,” Burton said.
Thill said electric vehicles are the present.
“They’re clearly here and we just need to make sure that we plan pro-actively for the infrastructure,” she said.
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