San Diego business receives statewide contract for solar electric vehicle charging stations

By Dave Fidlin

They’ve already popped up in select areas — including the San Diego Zoo — and their presence is expected to increase in the years ahead after a recent announcement from Gov. Jerry Brown’s office.

San Diego-based Envision Solar International was recently awarded a statewide contract for its iteration of solar charging stations, branded as the EV ARC. The contract carries a one-year term that sunsets in June 2016 with an option of two more years after the initial implementation period.

The announcement out of Sacramento means Envision Solar holds the exclusive contract with state, county and local governing agencies across California as new solar charging stations are planned. The partnership between the state and Envision Solar was announced in mid-July, and more specific details from the arrangement are expected later this year.

In recent years, a number of companies specializing in electric vehicle sales and sharing have laid roots in San Diego, including Mercedes-Benz’s Smart fleet and the car2go service. The growing infrastructure designed to power these alternative modes of transportation could provide fuel to the emerging companies in the years ahead.

According to CleanTECH San Diego, a nonprofit organization devoted to seeking renewable solutions, San Diego currently boasts the nation’s highest level of electrical vehicle usage, per capita.

A recent analysis by CleanTECH has revealed rising interest in using solar power as a charging source for electric vehicles. Pointing to a pilot project at the San Diego Zoo, CleanTECH President Jason Anderson revealed usage of the solar sites has climbed since the infrastructure was first introduced in 2012.

“The popularity of the solar-to-electric vehicle charging stations at the zoo has proven San Diego’s leadership in the EV market and supports a greater mission of reducing greenhouse gas emissions while stimulating the clean transportation economy,” Anderson said in an emailed statement.

Desmond Wheatley, CEO of Envision Solar, said the company was one of several that participated in the competitive process of obtaining the state contract for an electric vehicle-charging product that would populate municipalities across the state.

Early this year, Gov. Brown indicated greater steps would be taken to accommodate the growing fleet of electric vehicles as he laid out an ambitious set of climate goals, including a call to cut in half the amount of petroleum currently used to power vehicles by 2030.

“This is the biggest piece of news we’ve ever had in the history of our company,” Wheatley said of the state contract.

Envision Solar, with a 21-person workforce, was established in 2007 and is expected to add jobs to accommodate what Wheatley expects is a ramp up of production of the EV ARC product.

Envision Solar’s electric vehicle charging product differs from some of the other options in the marketplace. The EV ARC, in particular, is designed to fit within a parking space.

By tapping into solar energy, Wheatley said the EV ARC has been engineered to provide enough clean, solar electricity to power 150 miles of driving in an electric vehicle on any given day. An accompanying storage device is designed to keep the solar energy captured by EV ARC active throughout the day.

About 40 percent of the electric vehicle usage across the U.S. occurs in California — a statistic Wheatley said was one of several reasons that led to Envision Solar’s arrival in San Diego. Wheatley said he believes the EV movement is more than just a fad.

“There’s that saying that as goes California, so goes the rest of the United States,” Wheatley said. “We believe we will be experiencing triple-digit growth in our business alone within the next year.”

Envision Solar’s corporate and manufacturing facilities in San Diego are housed out of a growing campus on Trade Place, near Balboa Avenue.

“We consider ourselves part of a small club that have brought manufacturing jobs to San Diego,” Wheatley said. “There are very few companies offering these kinds of jobs in this city.”

While projects such as Envision Solar’s EV ARC product are impacting San Diego, the innovation is expected to have ripple effects elsewhere as well.

“Our goal with pilot projects like (the solar power stations at the zoo) is to deploy new clean technologies, see how people use and respond to them and replicate successful case studies across the region and the world,” Anderson of CleanTECH San Diego said.

To learn more about Envision Solar or to read more about their charging stations, visit envisionsolar.com.

—Dave Fidlin is a freelance journalist with a special affinity for San Diego and its people. Contact him at [email protected].