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Allan Zafft, right, leads a meeting of the GIAMPO technical advisory committee, which includes city officials and community leaders, who were given an update from NDOT Monday on a statewide electric vehicle charger infrastructure plan that’s being developed.
A Nebraska electric vehicle charging infrastructure plan is in the works.
The plan was detailed at Monday’s meeting of the Grand Island Area Metropolitan Planning Organization technical advisory committee. It’s a new program, Craig Wacker, Nebraska Department of Transportation highway planning manager, told the committee’s city officials and community leaders.
A draft of the plan has been submitted to Federal Highway Administration following a six-month study period that started in February.
The program is funded through the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and its National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula program, which, among other goals, aims to promote fast-charging stations along alternative-fuel corridors.
Nebraska is getting $6 million yearly for the next five years through the bill. Nebraska’s alt-fuel corridors have been designated for past several years, said Wacker.
“Within the state of Nebraska the corridors are basically (Interstate 80) and then Highway 6 running from the river back down to I-80 through Gretna. It’s the Omaha area of Highway 6,” he said.
Alternative fuel corridor build-up is the program’s first priority.
“Before we can really reach out and spend this money elsewhere in the state, those areas have to be built out,” said Wacker.
Build-out consists of: four DC fast-chargers per location, with chargers no more than 50 miles apart in any corridor. Funding for fast-chargers is an 80%/20% federal and local funding split.
One difficulty is there’s little guidance on public/private partnerships. The funds are not restricted to state or city exclusively owning them, said Wacker.
“We can fund those kinds of situations, but we can also fund these charging stations at local gas stations,” he said.
This includes partnerships with such companies as Casey’s, Love’s or Bosselman, which is unique for federal funds and for funds being administered by the state, said Wacker.
“How that’s all going to shake out is still a little up in the air because frankly five months wasn’t enough for us to get that sorted out very well,” he said.
The funds cannot go to a Tesla station, Wacker noted.
“It has to be to a unified charging station,” he said. “Teslas use the other ones with an adapter plug, but a regular car can’t go to a Tesla station and use it.”
He added, “Basically, we can’t fund Tesla.”
A DC fast-charger costs roughly $500,000.
They’re expensive as they require special lines for summoning up large quantities of power very quickly, said Wacker.
“They’re sitting there completely idle, not sucking any kind of power, but as soon as you plug them in they’re sucking a lot of power real fast,” he said. “To have the transmission lines that can handle going from zero to that and back to zero is expensive.”
While I-80 is “not far from being built out,” a charger is needed between Lincoln and Grand Island, and possibly for the 65-mile distance between Lincoln and Omaha, said Wacker.
“We do have more chargers out there than people realize,” he said. “Some of that was due to the VW scandal money that came into the state. That was the way the state spend it, was to put in electric charging stations.”
The Volkswagen Clean Air Act Civil Settlement of 2017 provided $2.7 billion for environmental programs to reduce carbon emissions, and $2 billion for development of non-polluting cars and supporting infrastructure.
Nebraska received $11.5 million for mitigation programs.
These funds were used to help provide for a new EV chargepoint at Grand Island’s Super Saver on Second Street.
For more information, visit the Nebraska NEVI webpage at ndot.info/NEVI.
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Allan Zafft, right, leads a meeting of the GIAMPO technical advisory committee, which includes city officials and community leaders, who were given an update from NDOT Monday on a statewide electric vehicle charger infrastructure plan that’s being developed.
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