The Regional Electric Vehicle Charging Network is waiting on some grant funding before it starts installing chargers.
Grey County Climate Change Initiatives Manager Rebecca Danard says the multi-county project between Grey, Bruce, Dufferin, Wellington, Perth, and Huron is expecting to hear back about funding this fall to move forward with the project.
This comes after Grey County approved contributing nearly $10,000 and staff resources to implement the network in 2022.
“It’s been a longer time than we expected to get things started, but that is what happens when you have a big project with this many different counties involved,” says Danard. “The chargers for this project haven’t been installed yet. We are waiting on actually some funding. We have applied to both provincial funding and looking to apply for federal funding that closes in the middle of September.”
The network aims to install about 30 EV chargers across the member counties.
“We have applied for funding for 22 level three chargers, those are the fast ones, and then six level two chargers, those are the slower ones. We will see what happens with the funding. In some cases, we were applying on a site by site basis. If we don’t get all the sites funded, it might put a bit of a hold on some of them,” says Danard.
She says they determined early on where the chargers would go. Some planned locations include Durham, Markdale, Thornbury, and Owen Sound.
“We hope to be moving ahead with most of them. We think it’s a really strong project to create the charging network for this whole entire region,” says Danard. “We really see the value of having a connected network so that if you are coming here in an EV, there is no concern that you are going to run out of range and not be able to get to where you need to go.”
Installation of the chargers is expected to start next construction season following the winter.