Three years in the making, an electric vehicle high-speed charging station opened with 10 universal chargers on parking spaces at Sacramento Regional Transit's Power Inn Road light rail station, the first of many hubs to come.
Sacramento-based GiddyUp EV Charging Inc. plans to build more like this in the region through public/private partnerships.
"In the future, things like providing EV charging are going to be as important to everyone as cellular phone networks or the internet," said GiddyUp CEO Chris Jerome, at an opening ceremony Wednesday at the station.
Currently, more than 80% of EV charging is done at the home. Public charging will be important infrastructure to give everyone access to charging, said Heidi Sanborn, president of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District's board of directors.
GiddyUp built out the Power Inn station with 10 Tritium 175 kilowatt chargers, which are branded as Siemens. They can charge a car, motorcycle, truck, big rig or bus to a 90% charge in 15 to 20 minutes, said Mike Calise, president of Tritium in the Americas.
Tritium DCFC Ltd. (Nasdaq: DCFC), based in Queensland, Australia, is the leading manufacturer of direct-current fast-charging hardware and software, Calise said.
These Level 3 chargers are universal, and they work with any vehicle, Jerome said. "We can charge anything with wheels and a battery."
Giddyup was founded in Silicon Valley and moved to Sacramento last year. The company designs, builds, finances and operates EV fast-charging hubs for retail, commercial and municipal customers. In this case, it's offering revenue sharing with SacRT. GiddyUp paid for the equipment and installation.
GiddyUp opened this part of the SacRT lot with 10 chargers as a first phase. It plans to double the number of spaces in a second phase. Jerome said it cost multiple millions of dollars to open the first phase, but the second phase, which will include 10 more chargers, will cost less than half that.
The eventual plan for the site includes a solar photovoltaic canopy and battery storage on site. The entire transportation hub investment was estimated to be about $20 million in 2020, when SMUD, SacRT and GiddyUp sought a grant from the Center for Innovative Finance Support of the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The company will be working with SMUD and SacRT on more of its parking lots to create charging stations all over Sacramento and SMUD territory.
"If we are going to change the country, we need to focus on one area and show how to do it right," Jerome said. "The nation learns from California, and California learns from Sacramento."
The Power Inn charging hub features lots of lighting, monitored high-definition cameras, Wi-Fi and a location just off Highway 50.
"Public charging has to be fast, convenient and safe," Jerome said.
Sanborn said she drove her electric car to Oregon, something she won't do again until the infrastructure gets better everywhere. She said range anxiety — driving outside of the range of a charging station — is a real fear for a battery-powered car driver.
"With projects like this, SMUD and SacRT are ahead of the game," said California Treasurer Fiona Ma, at the grand opening. When she was in the California Assembly, Ma was the author of Assembly Bill 631, approved in 2011, which allowed charging hubs to be developed without going before the California Public Utilities Commission.
