CERTAINLY BENICIA HAS BEEN KNOWN IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA as a place to come and recharge one’s batteries, what with our Great Day by the Bay filled with art, music, restaurants, eclectic watering holes, First Street shopping, our pier and beautiful waterfront, fantastic community parks and history!

But now not only those emotional and spiritual batteries can get recharged in Benicia, drivers (including visitors around the Bay Area) can get their electric car batteries charged here as well!

The city has set up its third electric charging station thanks to a $79,000 grant and contributions from Growing Energy Labs Inc., Bass Electric, BTC Power, Energy Vault, McCalmont Engineering, Ideal Power and CODA Energy (see Donna Beth Weilenman’s June 13 article in The Herald.)

All the city’s chargers, so far, are located at the City Hall parking lot on East K Street. The first two are Level 2 stations and have been in operation for a while. There’s a slight fee associated with charging.

Levels

Level 1 charging is the standard electrical 120V outlet. It takes about 22 hours to fully charge a battery.

Level 2 charging uses a 240V outlet, similar to what an electric clothes dryer uses.

DC fast charger

The new charger is a DC fast charger station. Whereas the Level 2 stations charge a standard electric vehicle in four to six hours, the DC fast charger can do a “fill up” in 30 minutes or less!

All three charging stations draw their power from the solar panels located in the parking lot. The DC charger also incorporates advanced battery storage technology from CODA.

This is BIG for Benicia because people who own electric cars and want to explore the Bay Area can see us as a perfect travel destination. Let’s say an electric car — not a Tesla with a 200-plus-mile range, but maybe a Nissan Leaf with an 80-plus-mile range — is coming from Gilroy, Auburn, Hopland or points in between. They can come to Benicia for the day and recharge ALL their batteries: car, emotional and aesthetic!

I should point out that finding an EV charging station today isn’t like the trek of driving from the Midwest to California during the 1930s and 1940s, when our family friends, Rose and John Welch, would drive from Minnesota to California to see their son, John. We would hear how they carried extra cans of gas and containers of water for the long stretches through those places where filling stations were few and far between.

I downloaded a data set from the U.S. Department of Energy website that shows there are approximately 490 charging stations in the 94xxx zip code — that is, the greater Bay Area. Nationally, there are 8,294 stations and 20,218 charging outlets (excluding private stations)! I also found two downloadable free apps that locate EV charging stations: ChargePoint and PlugShare.

Then I wondered how many gas stations there are in the U.S. and found there are 168,000 retail locations that sell gas to the public. I believe the tipping point is around 20 percent so, if we add just 25,306 more EV charging stations . . .

I know if I owned a gas station and saw the electric trend coming, I would definitely add a couple of charging stations to my inventory.

Sustainability is fun!

When you think about it, becoming and being sustainable is actually fun and satisfying. Let’s let our Bay Area neighbors know of yet another good reason Benicia is always a Great Day by the Bay!

Learn more

• Benicia Herald Story: beniciaheraldonline.com/benicia-to-unveil-electric-car-fast-charger/

• Locate stations: afdc.energy.gov/locator/stations/

• Sustainablebenicia.org — click on “Electric Vehicle Charging”

Constance Beutel is the chair of Benicia’s Community Sustainability Commission. She is a university professor and videographer and holds a doctorate from the University of San Francisco.