EV Boot Camp Webinar: Community Best Practices and Resources

On April 29, the Clean Energy Resource Teams (CERTs) and the Great Plains Institute (GPI) co-hosted Cities Charging Ahead: Electric Vehicle Boot Camp. The webinar shared electric vehicle (EV) best practices and resources drawn from the two previous successful peer cohorts of cities working together to learn and take action to accelerate EV adoption in their communities. The topics covered included city roles and EV charging, an overview of adding EVs to city fleets, and EV readiness for cities.

You can find the entire session recording on YouTube here. Each presentation was followed by small group discussions, which were not recorded.

City Roles and EV Charging

Metro CERT Director Diana McKeown covered city roles, charging station types & costs, siting considerations, funding and purchasing charging stations, vendors and services, and case studies.

Resources:

• Drive Electric MN Charging Site
  • Guide To Purchasing an EV Charger
• Blog: DCFC Cost Calculator
• Blog: GHG reductions from EVs
• Blog: Demand Charges 
• Charging Guidance Page on DEMN
  • Choosing the Right Charger
  • Site Selection Guidelines and Checklist
• Charging Case Studies
  • Red Wing
  • Edina
• Cooperative Purchasing
  • MN State Contract
  • Sourcewell
• Funding
  • VW Settlement Funding
  • Utility Incentives/Rebates: mncharging.org
• ADA Compliance Guide for Chargers
• Charger Locations: Plugshare

Fleet Overview

Katelyn Bocklund, program manager for the Transportation and Fuels team at GPI and co-facilitator of Drive Electric Minnesota, covered the EV market, technology and maintenance, fleet analysis, and tools and resources.

Resources:

• Drive Electric MN: How to Electrify Your Fleet: Lessons from Cities Charging Ahead Fleet Studies
• Blog:Electric Vehicles Available on the Minnesota State Contract
• Fleets for the Future (F4F)
  • Best Practices
• Buying Guides
  • Shift2Electric
  • Xcel Energy
  • Plugstar
• Run on Less Electric Truck Bootcamp (medium and heavy-duty vehicles)
  • Presented by North American Council for Fleet Efficiency and Rocky Mountain Institute
  • Free 10-part educational webinar series through August 2021​
  • Sign-up: https://runonless.com/bootcamp/

EV Readiness

Rebecca Heisel, a MN GreenCorps member serving with GPI, shared an overview of EV-Ready Principles developed by GPI to kick off this section. She then launched into an overview of the EV-Ready Cities/EV-Ready Tribal Nations Certification pilot program being developed by GPI, which included a review of a self-assessment. Rebecca then provided an overview of the structure of the pilot program before diving deeper into EV standards for private development, including zoning, permitting, and ordinances for EV charging. She also shared case studies from a few cities that have used some of these tools.

Q&A

The webinar concluded by answering questions about the topics, tools, and resources.

Learn More

Learn more about Cities Charging Ahead from our wrap blog, which published after the first cohort ended in 2019. We also have many resources on the Communities tab of the Drive Electric Minnesota website. We are in the process of updating this tab to add information and resources from the second cohort, Cities Charging Ahead 2.0.

We hope you find this webinar, tools, and resources useful no matter where you are on your EV journey. Please reach out to Diana McKeown [email protected] if you have questions or need assistance.

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