Shelbyville powers up for electric car project

There are plenty of places to fill up your vehicle in Shelbyville, and at some point in the near future, you'll have a spot to plug it in as well.

Shelbyville is one of several communities in Tennessee that has been selected to be a part of the EV Project: the largest deployment of electric vehicles and charge infrastructure in history.

Last week, Mayor Wallace Cartwright and city manager Michael Dill attended a meeting in Hermitage with participants such as Nissan, TVA, Clean Cities of Middle Tennessee (CCMT) and ECOtality North America, as well as leaders from other Tennessee communities, to learn more about the initiative.

CCMT is a voluntary program of the U.S. Department of Energy for the expansion of the use of alternatives to gasoline and diesel fuel.

Dill said while there are plans to put a recharging hub in Shelbyville, no location for the station has been determined.

Area communities including Tullahoma, Manchester, Murfreesboro and Columbia would also have the charging stations.

"The reason they chose Shelbyville is because of our location," Dill explained. "It's a very good plus for us, and they (CCMT) are going to be learning things as they go."

Beta site

Areas in only six states and the District of Columbia have been picked to be the test bed or "beta site" for the EV Project and the Department of Energy is going to be spending $114.8 million in grants for these states.

Additional private and public sector investment has brought the total project cost to approximately $230 million, according to ECOtality.

In Tennessee, the cities of Nashville, Knoxville and Chattanooga have been selected, with charging stations to be placed in towns along the triangle between the metropolitan areas -- and Shelbyville is one of them.

Dill said another reason Shelbyville was picked is the industry that already exists here, such as Newell-Rubbermaid, Tyson Foods and the new industry that will be coming in the future.

Other areas selected were the regions of Phoenix and Tucson in Arizona, Central Puget Sound and Olympia in Washington State, an area of western Oregon including the cities of Corvallis, Eugene, Portland and Salem, the San Diego/Los Angeles region in California and in areas around Houston, Dallas and Ft. Worth in Texas.

Dill pointed out that if you look at the U.S. map where the stations are planned, its mainly "the major, major cities ... then it's Tennessee - Middle Tennessee specifically."

Limited range

Currently, two major auto makers are coming out with fully electric models -- the Chevy Volt, which only has a range of around 40 miles per charge, and the Nissan Leaf, with a nearly 100-mile range. But smaller firms are also developing electric vehicles as well.

According to Nissan, it takes eight hours to get a full charge for a Leaf with a 220/240V home charging station, but a 480V quick-charging capability will eventually be made available.

In all, ECOtality North America will install over 15,000 vehicle charging stations nationwide in conjunction with launches of the Leaf and Volt within the next 14 months as part of the EV project.

ECOtality plans to install 2,350 240 volt chargers, 125 solar assisted TVA SMART Stations and 60 DC fast chargers in Tennessee.

According to CCMT, the state has been awarded 1,000 electric models from Nissan's 2010 fleet to be used by governments, commercial fleets, and individuals. The first Nissan Leafs should be delivered to Tennessee by December, Dill said.

ECOtality also claims that new jobs would come from the initiative, such as automotive workers, electricians, customer service, as well as installation technicians and IT software engineers.

Results studied

The EV Project will be collecting and analyzing data "to characterize vehicle use in diverse topographic and climatic conditions," according to ECOtality, as well as evaluating the effectiveness of the charging infrastructure, and will also "conduct trials of various revenue systems for commercial and public charge infrastructure."

They hope to take the lessons learned from the deployment of the new cars and the charging stations, so that they can streamline the release of the next five million electric vehicles.

The city manager said Shelbyville being selected for a charging station could "very possibly" mean other new industries moving to town.

"We need to be at the top of our game to bring new businesses in," he said.

Dill said CCMT wants Shelbyville to help pick the location for the charging station, admitting that the new technology is "limited right now, but who knows what going to happen in the future, and it's good to get on the front page on this sort of stuff."

A letter of intent with ECOtality has not been signed by Shelbyville officials yet, but Dill said that they intend to.

He said that is a "chicken and the egg" situation involved with the firms getting the new energy infrastructure set up -- with the question; do you put the stations in first, or wait until the vehicles become more available and numerous?

"This is a huge study ... they're going to figure out what works, what doesn't ... we're going to be a beta site and we should be excited about that, because if they're doing this one thing here, there could be other green initiatives (for Shelbyville) down the road," Dill stated.