Access Energy Cooperative provides electric vehicle charging station for the public

MT. PLEASANT - Access Energy Cooperative is preparing their company and members for a future with more electric vehicles on the road.

The company installed an electric charging station at their office in Mt. Pleasant late last fall and has been focused on experimenting with the station and figuring out usage. The station has been open to the public for use but the company plans to provide even more educational materials to their clients about the station in the coming months. Access Energy Cooperative works with ChargePoint to provide the dual port level 2 station to the public.

'It's just a service we want to provide our members and we're using it for information to give our members more information so hopefully they understand the options they have with EVs. It's something good for the community too,” CEO and general manager Kevin Wheeler, said.

Director of Member Services and Public Relations, Kimberly Davis, added Iowa is currently 34 in the nation for the amount of electric vehicles on the road and pointed to range anxiety and a lack of access to charging stations as potential reasons Iowans have been slower to adapt to the new technology. But with more and more charging stations erecting across the state, that may be changing.

'We always try to look to the future. We want to provide our members all the possibilities that we can. The electric vehicles are coming, it's only a matter of when they get here and we want to be prepared if someone in this area wants to buy an electric vehicle, they have options to charge,” Wheeler added.

As the country moves more toward electric power, Wheeler added it has major implications for energy cooperatives his Access Energy.

Tyler Thein, Director of Engineering for the company, said a level 2 charger can be 'a quarter-and-a-half of an average house's demand.”

'So if you consider a subdivision with ten houses and they all pull in and start charging right after work, that could be a pretty big stress on the system. We're trying to use [the station] to gather information about it and look to the future to mitigate that and ask our members to play a part in it,” Thein said.

Looking forward, the company hopes to continue meeting the needs of its members, including making more stations available in their 10-county coverage area as the presence of electric vehicles becomes more prevalent in Iowa.

'The possibility exists. If we need to [build more stations], we can,” Wheeler said.