As fall begins, the federal government is launching an electric vehicle (EV) charger cleanup. $100 million will be invested to fix up EV public charging stations to make the overall EV charging network better for drivers. If your community has an older or out of service EV charger, now is the time to alert federal officials and request new repair funds this fall, or talk with your state about their work to invest in the network of available EV chargers.
Fixing Existing EV Chargers
More than 6,000 public charging ports have been identified by charging providers as being “temporarily unavailable” out of a total of 151,506 nationwide. President Biden’s Administration has supported legislation to have a network of 500,000 electric vehicle EV public charging stations across the country through the new Electric Vehicle Charger and Reliability and Accessibility Accelerator program.
This program will provide applicants with $100 million in federal funding to repair and replace broken EV chargers. This $100 million is set aside with the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula program and should likely cover all eligible projects.
Now is the time to alert federal officials and request new repair funds this fall, or talk with your state about their work to invest in the network of available EV chargers.
Eligible Recipients and EV Projects
Only local governments and state transportation departments are eligible to receive this funding. The USDOT estimates the funds should be enough to cover all eligible projects; states and local governments should coordinate their applications. The application is designed to be streamlined so that applicants can include multiple chargers in one application.
To receive funding, the EV charger must already exist, be publicly accessible (they can be privately owned), be a level-2 or Direct Current Fast Charger and be listed by the Alternative Fuel Data Center (AFDC) by October 11, 2023. Funding can only be used for repairing or replacing the charger and the applicant is required to show it is broken and non-operational. The Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) contains a list from AFDC on how many EV chargers are listed as “Temporarily Unavailable” as of September 11, 2023. Local leaders should look at this list and the AFDC fueling station locator to identify if their broken public EV charger qualifies.
Identify Your Chargers and Apply Now
Municipalities should use the resources above to find out if one of their public chargers is included in the AFDC’s list. If a broken or non-operational EV charger is not on the list, local leaders should share that information with AFDC as the current list is from September 11th and the final update will come October 11, 2023. Be sure to ask your providers to submit an update if a local EV charger is not in service.
Applicants will also need to identify their 20 percent local match funding as the maximum Federal funding share is 80 percent. To help identify funding sources, local leaders should reach out to their State Department of Transportation’s offices, private owners of the chargers or the land it is on and check out NLC’s resources on meeting local matches.
Local governments and their partners have until November 13, 2023, to submit their applications. Local leaders should begin reading the NOFO now to gather all the necessary information to submit an application themselves or with their State DOTs. For further questions about the NOFO, please email RAA-NEVI@dot.gov.
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