Geographic area where there…

Geographic area where there are gaps:

Kawartha Lakes is 3,000sqkm extending from Pontypool in the south to near Minden in the north. In Kawartha Lakes, there is a sizeable gap in EV charging infrastructure. There are a three (3) listed locations in Lindsay and one (1) in Norland. There are no listed chargers available in Bobcaygeon, Fenelon Falls, Omemee or other smaller communities.

What kinds of situations are public charges most useful?

There are a number of situation where public charge would be useful. In particular in Kawartha Lakes is for tourism, travel, and commuting.

Tourism and travel;
Every year, Kawartha Lakes welcome 1.7 million visitors. Many of these visitors come for the day from the Greater Toronto Area. This drive could easily be over 300kms round trip. For those that stay overnight, publicly accessible charging infrastructure will be even more important.
Ontario Parks; there are 4 Ontario Parks in Kawartha Lakes; Emily, Balsam, Indian Point and QE2. All are significant tourism attractions and important to the local economy.

Kawartha Lakes has limited public transit for commuting to other regional centres for work (primarily to Peterborough and the GTA). EV infrastructure to be built in commuter lots or transportation hubs would be ideal.

Challenges to increasing and how can the government help?

Amongst many challenges a few stand out as potentially making a significant impact:
• Level 3 chargers are the most appropriate type for supporting tourism in rural Ontario. The cost for Level 3 charging infrastructure is expensive, particularly if being strategic to invest in enough infrastructure throughout the municipality to engage consumer confidence that the infrastructure is available. Provincial funding to support the capital costs in a meaningful way where municipalities can afford to invest (e.g. 50% funding may not be sufficient for rural municipalities to invest in the amount of capital infrastructure required).
• Capital investment may require work on surrounding infrastructure to enable EV infrastructure to be placed in existing parking lots (e.g. hydro to the EV charging station). Provincial funding that includes expenses beyond the EV charger itself would assist in making these projects more feasible.
• Maintenance of infrastructure is expensive. Investment in capital costs goes a long way, however the ongoing maintenance expenses may far outweigh the initial installation expenses covered by funding. Many comments on sites such as chargehub.com have comments that infrastructure is broken. Programs to support the maintenance would support long term investment.
• The infrastructure is relatively new, education campaigns for Council and Staff to understand the technology, maintenance and business case for best practice would help with wise decision making
• Commuter lots that are candidates for EV chargers may be in rural or remote areas. Programs to support anti-vandalism would be helpful in building confidence that these locations are ideal for EV charging stations.
• Maintaining an easy to access, up to date, inventory of charging hubs would help consumers know where infrastructure is available and encourage tourism to rural Ontario.
• There is concern that the current electricity supply infrastructure to rural communities may not be sufficient to serve the new demand created by EV charging stations. Ensuring supply for this infrastructure that does not negatively impact the rural communities they are located in is fundamentally important for the success of EV charging infrastructure in rural Ontario and Kawartha Lakes.