Oak Park considers user fee for electric vehicle charging stations
Electric vehicle users living in or driving through Oak Park may soon be paying a fee to use the village’s publicly-accessible electric vehicle charging stations.
The village board discussed a proposal Tuesday to charge users a $0.25 per kilowatt-hour fee, the market rate, at these stations. There is now no fee for any of the 26 village-owned stations. Users only have to pay a fee for parking in the lot or garage, if applicable, but not for charging itself.
According to village officials, more than 25% of greenhouse gas emissions in Oak Park are from cars and trucks. The Climate Ready Oak Park plan has the goal of reducing emissions by 60% by 2030 and reaching net-zero by 2050. Increasing access to electric vehicle charging stations for residents is one action the board could take to reach those goals.
The fee structure
To increase access to this infrastructure, there will be costs associated including for software, hardware, utility work and maintenance of facilities. These total annual expenses are estimated to be around $46,000. Village staff proposed several options for a fee to users to cover those costs, and potentially have revenue left over.
Their recommendation was the $0.25 per kWh fee.
Average charging sessions in the village are two and a half hours and take 11.59 kWh. Staff recommended the board implement a fee associated with the energy output rather than the time spent charging. This is because if two electric vehicles are plugged into the same unit, the energy output is shared. That means users could spend additional time charging and would be penalized for it with an hourly fee.
Two other options were proposed, a $0.15 per kWh fee or a $0.10 per kWh fee. Neither of these options would fully cover the cost of village maintenance or expansion of public electric vehicle charging stations.
In reviewing how peer communities approach fees for public electric vehicle charging stations, village staff found that Skokie charges $0.10 per kWh for the first two hours. Then, an additional fee of $3 per hour after the first two hours is applied.
Trustee Brian Straw said he likes Skokie’s method because it discourages long charging sessions, allowing for turnover, while still having a lower fee to incentivize residents to buy electric vehicles. Sean Keane, the village’s parking and mobility service manager, pointed out that the parking fees users have to pay already encourage turnover at charging stations.
Village staff pointed out that a user fee at these stations will impact low- and moderate- income individuals more than others.
But Trustee Cory Wesley said he thinks the prices could be too low and would like to see Oak Park implement something like River Forest, which charges $10 per hour for using the station for more than two hours. It generally costs less to charge an electric vehicle than it does to fill up a car with gas, he said, as he estimated he pays about $40 to $57 per month to charge his.
“Let’s be a lot more aggressive with this,” Wesley said.
Trustee Susan Buchanan said the equity issue is a concern for electric vehicle owners who are renters or live in multi-unit buildings. Homeowners can charge their vehicles through their own infrastructure, but renters don’t necessarily have that same option. Because it can take several hours to charge, she said she does not want to impose a time limit.
“If we try to maximize the amount of revenue we can generate from our EV charging stations, people just aren’t going to use them,” Straw said. “If we want to promote it [use of electric vehicles], we shouldn’t make it more expensive than market rate.”
Village President Vicki Scaman suggested reducing those renters’ parking permit fee if they have an electric vehicle, to avoid being “double charged.”
If desired, the board could also give residents a discount for charging through the ChargePoint app, with visitors paying the full amount.
“A lot of what we charge and what we decide to tax at the board table applies only to residents,” Trustee Lucia Robinson said. “This is an opportunity to spread that out between residents and non-residents.”
The village also plans to monitor how the fee will affect usage of these stations.
Additional revenue
If the board moves forward with the staff’s recommendation of $0.25 fee per kWh, the revenue generated is expected to cover expenses associated with electric vehicle station infrastructure and maintenance with about $14,000 left over. In the other proposed options, the village would run a deficit.
If the board pursues an option that would allow them to have money left over from this fee, they will then have to decide how to spend it. Village staff’s recommendation is to dedicate that revenue to the sustainability fund. This option would allow the village to work toward other goals in Climate Ready Oak Park, though nothing specific was earmarked. It’s about future planning, Village Manager Kevin Jackson said.
“I don’t think we’re going to deplete the sustainability fund in the next nine months or year,” Jackson said.
Other options include dedicating additional revenue to the parking enterprise fund or splitting the revenue between both that and the sustainability fund.
The parking enterprise fund has a deficit due to capital improvement expenses and debt service obligations, according to village officials, associated with village parking lots and structures. The village board expressed an interest in utilizing the additional revenue from the electric vehicle charging fee to cover that parking fund deficit.
The parking fund incurred the cost of establishing electric vehicle charging stations and pays for the maintenance of garages, where some charging stations are housed, Robinson said, so it makes sense to recover those costs.
Straw and Buchanan, however, were in favor of having some or all that extra money go into the sustainability fund.
“I would like to see the surplus that we’re devoting to the sustainability fund be a little bit larger because I want it to be driving more sustainability initiatives,” Straw said. “The reason the parking fund is negative is because we give away a lot of free parking.”
Most of the village’s greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings, so Buchanan said she wants additional revenue made through this user fee to help lower those emissions.
The board did not vote on a decision yet and future conversations about pricing for electric vehicle charging stations are expected.
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