TURNERS FALLS — The Selectboard approved using $11,500 during its Monday meeting to get Montague’s first electric vehicle chargers up and running this spring.
Vehicle chargers will be installed in the municipal parking lot on 2nd Street by the Great Falls Discovery Center, in the 6th Street parking area by Peskeomskut Park, in the gravel parking lot behind Town Hall and at the Turners Falls Airport.
In addition to the $11,500 to make the chargers operational, there is also a fee of about $2,000 for maintenance of the machines and for the computer service used for charging customers. Costs for the electrical infrastructure, the machines themselves and construction and installation, though, are covered by Eversource, which has a goal of installing 3,500 electric car chargers in Massachusetts by 2020.
There is a possibility of the town earning some money from the machines, depending on how much it charges to use them. But the Selectboard, in deciding in October to go ahead with installing the machines, characterized it as a public service, and noted that having electric car charging stations will likely draw people into Turners Falls from nearby towns and off of Route 2.
The chargers on 2nd and 6th streets, which will be installed on property owned by the town, will likely be installed in March, said Town Planner Walter Ramsey. Each charging kiosk will be able to charge two vehicles at a time.
The gravel parking lot behind Town Hall is owned by the FirstLight Hydro Generating Co., not the town. FirstLight is also using the same Eversource program as the town. FirstLight does not have a clear expectation of when the machine in the gravel lot will be installed, said the company’s Community Relations Manager Carter Wall.
Meanwhile, the airport is installing two charging kiosks, which are being funded by a state grant as part of a larger overhaul of the airport’s electrical infrastructure that will include a solar panel installation, said Airport Manager Bryan Camden. The car chargers are expected to be installed in March.
Presently, the closest electric vehicle chargers are seven in Greenfield. Farther away, there are four in Shelburne Falls, one at Berkshire East in Charlemont, one at Deerfield Academy and one at Northfield Mount Hermon School in Gill, according to a website called plugshare.com, which maps locations of publicly accessible car chargers. The map shows larger clusters of chargers in and around Amherst and Northampton.
Reach Max Marcus at mmarcus@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 261.