Electrifying Summer Vacations: EV Chargers in State Parks and Rec Centers

When cities are planning charging infrastructure, they choose to locate chargers at places vehicles are generally parked for a few hours, finding places city employees, residents, and visitors can charge easily. City centers often make convenient locations, as do libraries, superstores, movie theaters, and highway exits.

Currently, the Biden administration is meeting with corporation leaders, EVSE charging companies, and state politicians who govern infrastructure, to discuss his goal of adding half a million new chargers. Many of these new chargers are destined to cities to support job growth, but plenty are also destined for rural areas, and for parks, national landmarks, and recreation centers.

When charging outside the city, federal and state entities are working hard to install EVSE where it’s most used and most convenient, working with the Department of Energy to put EVSE in recreational areas. In fact, the National Park Foundation, BMW of North America, and California Energy Commission, are helping to install chargers near public landmarks. These efforts also improve the livelihoods of restaurants, motels, and shops in the area.

The National Park Foundation has been installing EVSE for over a decade. “The automobile has long been central to the great American vacation in national parks,” said National Park Service Deputy Director P. Daniel Smith. “While our treasured landscapes offer familiar vistas time after time, the automobile has changed greatly, and parks want to meet the needs of our visitors who drive electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.”

Once there were barely a dozen chargers in national parks across the country while now there over 140. Clean Cities National Park Initiative, a partnership between the National Park Service and the Department of Energy has saved about 13,000 gallons of gasoline and nearly 100 tons of green house gas emissions every year!

According to the National Park Service, a donation from BMW enabled the installation of 100 new chargers in national parks, including the Thomas Edison National State Park in New Jersey, and parks in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona, California, and Washington.

Other states are planning their own infrastructure. An Albuquerque study suggested that “Any facility with greater than 10 projected daily EVs in any one of three adoption rate scenarios, was recommended at least one DCFC station.” A bio park, a stadium, City Hall, a multicultural center, and four libraries were among those public places chosen for installation in the study.

Stadiums are also getting in on the action: the Arizona Diamondbacks, San Francisco Giants, Oakland Raiders, San Diego Chargers, and Atlanta Braves, among others, have new EV chargers available for the public, as do many others, including 61 new chargers in Sun Park in Atlanta. What kind of chargers should they be? Some are DCFC, but others are Level 2 chargers.

The Blink IQ 200 is a great choice for parks, stadiums and recreational facilities planning to install chargers. A quick alternative to fast chargers which don’t work for all vehicles, the Blink IQ 200, is capable of providing 80 amps of continuous output when installed in a 100-amp circuit. This level of output power provides up to 65 miles of charge per hour in some EVs.

The National Park service is working with government agencies to install EV chargers around parks, libraries, and community centers to ensure they are often used, conveniently located, and accessible for all. More and more people are traveling by car or vacationing close to home this year. Electrify your summer vacation by taking advantage of new chargers that make it easier than ever to roam across the country in your EV.