Dive Brief:
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Duke Energy plans to spend $1.5 million in increase the number of public electric vehicle charging stations in North Carolina by 30%.
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Under the program, Duke will offer $1 million to cities in the state – up to $50,000 per city or town – and invest $500,000 to build electric bus charging stations.
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The investment is the result of a $5.4 million settlement between Duke and the Environmental Protection Agency in September 2015 over alleged violations of the Clean Air Act regarding pollution control equipment on coal-fired plants that Duke modified.
Dive Insight:
Duke’s commitment to invest $1.5 million in EV charging stations comes a year and a half after a joint project with Siemens in which the companies worked together to reduce the costs of EV charging.
In that collaboration, Siemens provided residential charging equipment that can monitor and record use and can be controlled remotely via a local area network or the cloud.
Duke said it has already backed the development of several hundred EV charging stations in the state. Advanced Energy, a non-profit set up by the North Carolina Utilities Commission, says the state has 4,700 registered plug-in EVs and about 700 public charging ports.
Under the new program, Duke said it will pay 100% of the cost of the public charging stations, up to 5,000 per charge port; $20,000 per site, or $50,000 per city under the program.
The commitment is part of a September 2015 settlement with the EPA over alleged violations of the Clean Air Act. In that case, the agency asserted that Duke made major modifications to coal-fired power plants in the 1990s without installing required pollution controls. Duke settled without admitting it had violated the law after a 15-year legal battle.