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Carbon Day Automotive, the midwest distributor for Coulomb Technologies’ ChargePoint stations, has unveiled the nation’s first electric vehicle charging station. Located in the city of Chicago, the charge point uses solar energy to collect power and then send it through the unique ChargePoint Smartlet to customers.

The CEO of Coulomb Technologies, Richard Lowenthal, was on hand to show off the new station.  “Carbon Day and the City of Chicago are demonstrating true innovation, ingenuity and initiative,” he said.

Two things make this station unique amongst EV charge points: solar power and utility collaboration.

The solar panels offer the advantage of allowing some of the system’s power to be collected free of charge, thus lowering its drain on the utility as well as costs to the owner and users.

During peak hours, if the utility can’t provide full power to the station, the charge point will compensate by slowing down the charge to match available energy so as not to put a drain on the utility. Further, it can be programmed to change the cost (rate) to the consumer depending on the time of day or power availability.

This is an important step forward in the newly-emerging arena of the EV charging infrastructure.  “Without these stations it would be like driving around in traditional cars without the availability of gas stations,” says Scott Emalfarb, CEO of Carbon Day.

Source: AllCarsElectric