With hopes of benefiting the city environmentally and economically, West Valley City is teaming up with a company to install fast-charging stations for electric vehicles. 

eV Power Exchange was chosen by the city to provide public fast chargers at five locations where electric car drivers will be able to plug in their vehicles. “Fast” means that the chargers can restore 80% of a vehicle’s power in just 40 minutes.

“There will be 26 fast chargers that are owned by the city and managed by eV Power,” said the company’s Chief Revenue Officer Travis Nicolaides. The main station will be built at the Maverik Center and include 10 chargers. Four each will be installed at the West Valley City Family Fitness Center, Utah Cultural Celebration Center, The Ridge Golf Club and Stonebridge Golf Club.

West Valley City requested proposals for EV charging stations some 18 months ago and received nearly a dozen bids.

“It was something the city wanted to get involved in and ultimately the (city) council decided they, too, shared in that goal,” said West Valley City Economic Development Director Jonathan Springmeyer.

Electric vehicle charging stations like these will be installed at five West Valley City-owned sites by eV Power Exchange after being selected by the city to provide the service for the growing number of EVs. (Courtesy eV Power Exchange)

Springmeyer hopes the first of the chargers can be installed and ready for use in a matter of months. “We’re moving pretty quickly,” he said. “We’re hoping to have most of them completed by the end of the year.”

Drivers will pull up to the chargers, plug in their cars, swipe or tap a payment card and juice up their vehicles. There will also be an option to reserve a charger ahead of time and pay for its use through a mobile app. Nicolaides said a charge can typically range from $5 to $20 or more depending on how much power a vehicle needs.

Costs to install the chargers will depend on where they are located and the proximity of available electrical infrastructure to deliver the power to the chargers. “The average is probably between $80,000 to $100,000 per charger,” Nicolaides said. He added that about half of the city’s outlay for the project will be covered by government grants and incentives, including a grant from Rocky Mountain Power. City officials are seeking additional federal and state funding sources.

“We do believe it will have a positive effect for economic development,” Springmeyer said, noting it is another aspect of West Valley City that city officials can pitch when people consider the city as a place to visit or do business. And Nicolaides said that the chargers and the vehicles they recharge will help West Valley City improve the area’s air quality, which can be notoriously bad during the winter when inversions trap pollutants close to the valley floor.

Both eV Power Exchange and West Valley City will share in the profits made from the charging stations after expenses, including payments to Rocky Mountain Power for providing the electricity.

Utah ranks 10th in the nation in the adoption rate for plug-in cars among its drivers with 83 electric car registrations per 10,000 residents, according to the most recent figures. California, Hawaii and Washington top the list. Kentucky has the fewest. Tesla vehicles make up the majority of EVs on the road, followed by Chevrolet and Ford. The rest are built by a variety of mostly foreign-based manufacturers.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates there will be 33 million electric vehicles in the U.S. by 2030. Electric car sales are expanding domestically but the pace of growth has slowed this year and some car makers have announced plans to scale back EV production for the time being.

Salt Lake City-based eV Power Exchange currently has 20 other privately-owned fast charging stations from Sandy to Ogden with plans to more than double that around the state for public use by the end of 2024. It hopes to have 100 such stations around the country in the next year or so with the goal of placing them at venues that people visit often.

“We are really trying to address some of the markets that are up and coming,” Nicolaides said.