The city of Dayton will almost double the electric vehicle chargers within city limits with the help of the Sustainable Ohio Public Energy Council.
The energy council received a $12.5 million federal grant. It will use part of that money to install 26 new EV chargers in Dayton. The city currently has 34 publicly available electric vehicle charging stations.
Some of the grant money also will go to communities such as Athens as part of a larger initiative to increase electric vehicle infrastructure in Southern Ohio.
Dayton has identified two approaches to placing the new charging sites, said Meg Maloney, sustainability manager for the city.
Some of the chargers will be placed near facilities such as City Hall and the Ottawa Yards to be accessible to city fleet vehicles. The other chargers will be placed near multifamily housing units.
“It's always cheaper for people to charge at their homes. So we were trying to identify areas that we had charging gaps, and trying to invest in those gaps so that for the future, we wouldn't have those big infrastructure gaps,” Maloney said.
In July 2023, Dayton published its analysis on existing EV infrastructure in the city, including identifying access disparities to charging stations. Most of the current public chargers are located in downtown and the south side of Dayton, according to Maloney.
Final sites haven't been identified, but she said the city anticipates putting the chargers in the west, north and east sides of Dayton. The city analysis pointed to those as high priority areas.
Maloney hopes this expansion will reduce concerns for people who worry the current charging infrastructure is lacking.
“We're being proactive in ensuring that every neighborhood in the city of Dayton limits will have access to a public charger,” she said. “And that will eliminate people from thinking that they're not going to have access to a charger, so they shouldn't get an electric vehicle.”
It likely will two years to install all of the new chargers, Maloney said.
As electric vehicle prices drop, Maloney said this will be an important step in increasing transportation equity in the city.
The current presidential administration is aiming for 50% of all vehicle sales to be electric by 2030.
