Home / Cities / Partner City / Houston, Texas
Updates – January 5, 2010
Houston is awaiting the arrival of the Nissan Leaf tour, which will land in the city on February 5th. The city is putting a plan together to deploy 400 Level 3 charging stations. They are also looking into the feasibility of siting charge points in parking garages and at grocery stores.
Finally, like many of our other cities, Houston is working toward establishing preferred, certified electricians for charging installation.
Updates – 11/20/09
On Tuesday November 17, 2009, The City of Houston, along with retail electricity provider Reliant Energy, launched their pilot program, “Power of the Plug-in.” This is a major step toward preparing Houston for future electric vehicles. “Power of the Plug-in” has converted 10 Toyota Prius to Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) by way of installation of a Hymotion battery pack. It is anticipated these vehicles will average 100 miles per gallon. The city is also installing 15 charging stations at various city facilities, 10 of which will be available to the public. Coulomb Technologies provided the charging stations for this project and charging will be at no cost to the consumer in the first year of the program.
“I applaud Houston for its electric vehicle initiative,” said Stephen Crolius, Senior Director, Transportation, Clinton Climate Initiative, a program of the William J. Clinton Foundation, “These tangible steps will position the city as a leader in the climate-friendly transportation sector.”
Future exploration of plug-in vehicles will continue this spring when the City will convert an additional 5 Prius to PHEV and install another 5 charging stations at various Houston Public Libraries in parking spots reserved for hybrid vehicles. Additionally, Houston is exploring a centralized downtown motor-pool fleet to consolidate individual department motor pools and reduce vehicle by more than 50%. Along with a web-based reservation system, Houston intends to purchase all-electric vehicles to stock the downtown pooled fleet, with the exception of some trucks, vans, and SUVs in the mix.
The roadmap to making Houston plug-in ready continues through private sector efforts. For example, Reliant Energy’s recent announcement to work with Nissan and further explore infrastructure needs and business models. Additionally, we will continue to work with other stakeholders within the region to develop a uniformed plan going forward.
Houston is an official partner city of Project Get Ready, an initiative helping cities prepare for electric vehicle adoption. In order to assist other cities in their efforts Houston will provide cost breakdowns of its installation efforts at various types of facilities. These numbers are intended to help with cost projects and calculations of ROI.
Houston Chronicle #1: City Hall’s hybrids: Green gold in the oil patch
Houston Chronicle #2: Group wants Texas to plug in with hybrid vehicles
Wall Street Journal: Will Houston Become an Electric-Car Capital?
Discovery: ‘Project Get Ready’ Got Set and Went in Houston
CW Channel 39: Getting Plugged In Downtown
ABC Channel 13 Video: Houston plugs into greener future
Texas Energy and Environment: Reliant announces plans for electric vehicle services in Houston
City of Houston: Reliant Energy and the City of Houston Launch Electric Vehicle Pilot Project
The City of Houston is currently working on two major efforts in preparation for the electrification of vehicles. Houston is home to some of the world’s largest oil and energy companies and covers 624 square miles. The challenge of bringing electric vehicles to our city is more than just creating an infrastructure of charging stations, it is overcoming a mindset. However, over 35% of the municipality’s electricity load is from renewable sources and we have the nation’s third largest hybrid fleet. Our mission to conserve energy lines up with the Rocky Mountain Institute’s Project Get Ready.
We are teaming up with several partners in this initiative. Texas has a competitive electric market and we are working with both CenterPoint Energy, who owns the infrastructure and Reliant Energy, part of NRG, who is the major electric provider. Once the stakeholder group is finalized we will update our page to include timelines and more details on our efforts.
Our first initiative is a pilot program in cooperation with Reliant Energy in which we will convert 15 Toyota hybrids into Plug in Hybrid Electric Vehicles as additions to our fleet. We will build a 1:1 charging infrastructure for these vehicles and two home charging stations. This project will be marketed with a media campaign along with educational programs and events. The vehicles will be equipped with monitoring devices and we will use multiple vendors of charging stations installed at city owned facilities. This pilot program is instrumental in the success of a much larger project.
During the ongoing study, City of Houston will begin to install approximately 100 charging stations around town at city owned facilities such as libraries, parks, sport venues, the zoo, etc. We are enlisting the help of the Greater Houston Partnership, private businesses, real estate developers, other governmental agencies and neighboring municipalities to also install and commit to purchasing EVs for their fleets and installing additional stations. This infrastructure is more for piece of mind than a necessity, but we understand without this initial level of comfort the adoption process will be long and drawn out. We will also explore creating level three charging station infrastructure on the interstate highways between major cities in Texas. These will be strategically located by restaurants or outlet malls to allow for dining and shopping while charging. Additionally, we will begin working with the other major cities to ensure Texans can drive their electric vehicles form town to town and have places to charge. Multifamily developments play an important roll and must be included in this effort as well; we cannot limit electric vehicles to single family homeowners.
The City of Houston and our team will commit to purchase over 300 all electric vehicles from a major car manufacturer for delivery in late 2010. We expect through our marketing campaigns, Houstonians will be ready to adopt this technology quickly. We have been unsuccessful in taking cars off the road, but we can take the emissions out of the cars and anticipate huge reductions in emissions. Houston will be ready.
For more information, contact James Tillman (james.tillman@cityofhouston.net)
I’m really excited that my city is doing something to ease this switch from gasoline operated vehicles to EV’s…I eagerly awaiting the 2011 Chevy Volt and hope Houston will be one of the launch sites for this new car in 2010.
I am an average citizen who is looking to get involved in anything involving creating an infrastructure for EV’s or getting out the word on electric vehicles.
I wanted to know how could a EV enthusiast be involved in Project Get Ready or any other group in Houston.
Posted by Ibraheem Kareem September 28th, 2009 at 2:27 pmYour project is excellent and we would enjoy the opportunity to participate in any way possible. Our parent company, Positive Energy Resources of Houston is a wind and solar power systems integrator and we are the local sales and installation provider for Coulomb Technologies ChargePoint EV Charging Systems. We note that Coulomb is listed as one of PGR’s partners.
We have time and resources available to lend to the cause now and are currently negotiating with prospective EV charge site clients. We look forward to hearing from you.
Posted by Nan McReynolds November 5th, 2009 at 2:21 pm