November Charging Infrastructure Webinar

On November 17, 2022 the Electrification Coalition hosted the fifth in a series of webinars about charging infrastructure. The event, titled Elevating Industry: 15 Years of Best Practices in One Hour, featured our Electrification Coalition Business Council (ECBC) partners who discussed the Electrification Coalition’s newly released white paper focused on industry best practices and lessons learned to combat common challenges with deploying charging infrastructure at scale.

Key takeaways include:

Alex Beaton of EVgo noted that in addition to public-private partnerships being a key factor in accelerating EVSE buildout, site-by-site awards during buildout allow for more networks to choose from, all while including small businesses that may otherwise be excluded with site bundling.

Hannah Steinweg from Rivian spoke about how states heavily benefit from a reduced deployment timeline by promoting a streamlined permitting process during EVSE implementation. In addition, she mentioned that even though NEVI formula funding is on everyone’s minds, there are other funding streams out there, including state-specific and industry-specific discretionary grants.

Dan O’Shea of ABB highlighted the ‘must haves’ of successful EVSE public charging. Safe, high-quality resilient hardware, connected networks, and robust workforce development are all key in building out a reliable and highly utilized grid of public EV charging across the United States.

The Q&A portion of the webinar also raised important questions, including the importance of aligning private sector goals with public policy surrounding EVSE. Our speakers noted that critical steps to fast and effective deployment include:

• Creating a consistent experience via widely accepted standards
• Using public sector funds to enable investment in regions sooner than the market would,
• open communication regarding issues in supply chain bottlenecks and sourcing parts from local firms were all mentioned as