Henrico gets federal funding jolt for EV charging stations

People shopping for a new car or truck often hesitate to buy an electric vehicle because there aren’t many public charging stations.

However, that situation will improve in Henrico County, which was awarded about $1.45 million in January through the U.S. Transportation Department’s Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant Program. The funds, along with a $363,200 county match, will be used to provide 38 EV charging ports at seven publicly accessible facilities.

“We do have 69 EV charging stations in Henrico, but they’re not in areas that are necessarily publicly available,” says Cari Tretina, chief of staff to the county manager. “What our grant application focused on was the areas that were underserved but also would best meet the [grant] metrics.”

She says it will take 12 to 18 months to work through the grant process and find a company that will ultimately install the stations and operate them on a revenue-sharing basis.

The recommended locations are Tuckahoe Area Library, Fairfield Area Library, Henrico County Government Center, Eastern Government Center, Eastern Henrico Recreation Center, Henrico Sports & Events Center and Short Pump Park.

Henrico is the only locality in Virginia to receive one of the 47 grants awarded this year through the program’s community charging track. The feds’ priorities are rural areas as well as low- and moderate-income neighborhoods with low ratios of private parking or high ratios of multiunit dwellings.

Virginia passed a law in 2021 requiring every new car sold in the state to be fully electric by 2035, and public EV charging stations are essential to increasing buyers’ acceptance of plug-in electric vehicles. The Richmond area, which includes Henrico, has 503 charging stations, according to PlugShare, an app that tracks public charging stations.

Adding seven stations in Henrico is “huge” and will help dealers market EVs, says Ralston King, vice president of legislative affairs for the Virginia Automobile Dealers Association. The VADA is doing everything it can to promote EVs, he adds, and the National Automobile Dealers Association just created a sales training and certification program for dealerships.

By 2030, an estimated 500,000 EVs will be on the roads in Dominion Energy Virginia’s service territory, up from 100,000 out of 7 million vehicles now. Dominion will be able to meet the demand because it factors that into its forecast for infrastructure needs, says Kate Staples, the utility’s electrification director.