DC America discusses plans with Grayson
Aug. 21—GRAYSON — The City Council of Grayson held a special-called meeting on Saturday to hear a presentation from DC America.
Rodney Adkins, the company's director of business development, spoke before a quorum of council members, with councilman Willis Johnson serving as Mayor Pro Tempore in Mayor George Steele's absence.
The presentation covered a wide variety of information concerning the electric car charging skids and the potential avenues for obtaining grants to fund the project.
DC America is a company made through the joint efforts of Synergy, a company known for making skid-mounted regulators for the gas and oil industry and Dixon Electrical, an electrical contracting company. Mr. Adkins himself has 32 years of experience with infrastructure for city utilities.
Electric cars have enjoyed a growing popularity, made appealing by their enhanced "green" footprint as opposed to those operating on fossil fuels or even hybrids, which operate on both.
According to greencars.com, more than 310,000 electric cars were sold in the first six months of 2022 in the United States. Electric cars can be charged nightly at the owner's home but to facilitate travel, charging stations have been and are continuing to be built, and electric vehicle owners can follow an app that shows a map where these charging stations are located.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), enacted as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, established the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program ("NEVI Formula") to provide funding to states to strategically deploy electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure and to establish an interconnected network to facilitate data collection, access and reliability.
The federal government offers grants to cities to build these charging stations, with the eligibility being each station being 50 miles from a like station and having access to a major highway. Also, to qualify for government grants, the station in question must also be within 1 mile of said highway. The City of Grayson qualifies to apply for this grant.
Adkins provided the council with information regarding the DC America charging skid, and answered questions. Some pertinent points Adkins presented were that the West Virginia-based company uses all American-made materials, provides a "turnkey" installation solution, is easily upgradeable so that more charging bays can be added with comparative ease in the future, and provides drastically reduced onsite construction time and cost. It also provides billing management solutions for each transaction, reducing hands-on maintenance by the city.
The council did not make any decision on the project Saturday, but will take up the issue at a future city council meeting. Anyone interested in learning more about the EV charging skids or about DC America, in general ,can find all pertinent information at dc-america.com.
(606) 326-2655 — cromans@dailyindependent.com