Home / Cities / Partner City / Houston, Texas
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 peace 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 role and must be included in this effort as well; we cannot limit electric vehicles to single family homeowners.
“As part of the EV Project, ECOtality assigns electricians from its preferred-contractor network to assess EVSE sites. If a site that qualifies for the EV Project is a standard, new single-family residential installation and no utility-service upgrade of the home’s electrical capacity is required, ECOtality installs the EVSE for free. For more-complex EV Project sites, ECOtality may pay for a portion of the installation. If a site does not qualify for the EV Project (e.g., because the EVSE customer rents rather than owns a home), the customer has the option of working with an automaker’s EVSE provider (such as AeroVironment and SPX Service Solutions), another EVSE provider, or any other licensed electrician.”
“As part of the EV Project, many of Houston’s initial Chevy Volt purchasers will be eligible to obtain EVSE through ECOtality, the EV Project’s EVSE provider. In these cases, ECOtality is notified when Volt customers express interest in home EVSE, and ECOtality contacts the customers about their options. Outside the EV Project, General Motors is working with EVSE provider SPX Service Solutions to serve Volt customers. Nissan is working with EVSE provider AeroVironment. As more vehicle choices enter the Houston market, the manufacturers of those vehicles likely will partner with EVSE providers to serve their customers.”
“Following the EVSE installation, the electrician requests an inspection from the Code Enforcement Group. Under a pilot program for single-family residential EVSE, if the request is received before 12:00 p.m., the inspection is completed the same day. For requests made after 12:00 p.m., inspections are completed within 24 hours.”
“The EVSE customer’s electrician applies for a permit via the Houston Code Enforcement Group’s Online Permits system. Approval is automatic and instantaneous for standard installations. The fee is $35. More-complex installations have different permitting requirements.
“Houston applied its existing online express permitting process to EVSE installations. With this process, online permits from Houston’s Code Enforcement Group are issued automatically and instantaneously for standard EVSE, and an inspection can be performed on the same day as installation. Thus, the entire assessment, permitting, installation, and inspection process for a simple EVSE project can be completed in one day.”
The City of Houston is working closely with utility CenterPoint Energy on grid-integration issues, and CenterPoint has researched the effects of EVSE use on the grid. EVSE permit information will be provided to Houston’s electric power utilities to help them identify and address clusters of EVSE installations. In addition, ECOtality is notifying Houston’s utilities of plug-in vehicle sales related to the EV Project.”
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.
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 use 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 uniform 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
“Plug-in vehicles will begin arriving in Houston in March 2011, and the city fleet plans to acquire 100 of them in addition to converting 40 hybrid electric vehicles to plug-in operation. The city is also supporting installation of 40 municipal and 25 public charging stations. These will be complemented by 100 public Level 2 charging stations and 50 fast-charging stations installed by NRG EV Services. NRG EV Services also will offer EVSE incentives to Chevy Volt and Nissan LEAF purchasers. As mentioned above, ECOtality is providing free residential EVSE to Houston’s Chevy Volt buyers as part of the EV Project.
“An integrated plug-in vehicle planning process was completed at the end of 2010 along with full implementation of the rapid permitting and inspection process. High-occupancy-vehicle lane access for plug-in vehicles is also planned. Various public-private partnerships are helping make the city plug-in ready and educating potential plug-in vehicle customers. An ongoing EVSE clustering project will help determine if transformers in neighborhoods with many plug-in vehicles have adequate capacity.
“Texas provides incentives for plug-in vehicles and EVSE. See Texas Incentives and Laws on the Alternative Fuels and Advanced Vehicles Data Center.”
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