Energy secretary's entourage sparks electric-vehicle charging dispute near Grovetown
A recent Grovetown stopover by U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is making national headlines over a dispute at an electric vehicle charging station that spurred a 911 call.
Granholm and an entourage of staffers conducted a four-day trip through the South in June to tout green energy and the efficiency of electric vehicles. The group reached the Grovetown area to charge their EVs at the Walmart Supercenter on Steiner Way.
“Her advance team realized there weren't going to be enough plugs to go around,” said National Public Radio reporter Camila Domonoske, who accompanied Granholm on the junket and wrote an online article that published Sept. 10 describing the incident. “One of the station's four chargers was broken, and others were occupied. So an Energy Department staffer tried parking a nonelectric vehicle by one of those working chargers to reserve a spot for the approaching secretary of energy.”
That didn’t sit well with an EV driver who was among several others waiting to use the station.
“They said they are saving the space for somebody else, and it's holding up a whole bunch of people who need to charge their cars,” the unidentified caller said to the 911 operator.
Gradually, charging spaces opened for the drivers. Columbia County sheriff’s Maj. Steve Morris said Tuesday that no incident report was filed over the dispute and nobody was arrested.
No Georgia law seems to prohibit a nonelectric vehicle from parking at an EV charging station. Georgia lawmakers passed Senate Bill 146 earlier this year that requires EV drivers to pay for recharging by the amount of electricity used instead of by the time spent charging.
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Energy secretary's Grovetown stop spurs dispute over EV charging
