Tulip Time visitors will be able to refuel on elephant ears and lemonade while refueling their electric cars.
Installation of two downtown Holland electric charging stations should be complete today. Another 15 are to be installed around town in the coming months.
ChargePoint America, a program of Coulomb Technologies, is offering the charging stations for free. The Holland Board of Public Works will pay about $100,000 to install them.
Officials hope adding the charging station will help Holland look more like a hub for the battery industry and portray the area as environmentally friendly and at the front end of accepting new technologies.
The two stations on Eighth Street — one between The Holland Sentinel and Readers World buildings and one west of Macatawa Bank — will remain free at least for Tulip Time, the BPW board decided in a 4-1 vote during a special meeting Monday.
Whether the charging stations’ electricity would remain free is up for debate.
“We’re in the job of selling Holland, Michigan, to the greater world, so we can get more jobs here,” Board Member Phil Miller said.
Here’s the logic: If electric car users are encouraged to park in these spaces, people will see the cars and start considering them more the norm, which could, in turn, encourage electric car sales — and the batteries that go in them, made by LG Chem and Johnson Controls Saft, which are investing millions of dollars in new advanced battery plants in Holland.
The BPW might face some restrictions on whether it can give away electricity.
“I think we ought to be very careful about the policy of giving away electricity for free,” Board Member Jim Storey said. “To subsidize people who spent big bucks on cars sends the wrong message to people we just levied a rate increase on.”
Charging station locations
Holland City Hall
Parking ramp on Seventh Street between College and
Columbia avenues
*Eighth Street between The Holland Sentinel and Readers World buildings
*Eighth Street west of Macatawa Bank
Hope College (Martha Miller parking lot)
Holland Public Schools
Padnos Transportation Center at Lincoln and Eighth Street
Holland Board of Public Works Hastings Avenue service center
Doubletree Hotel
Residence Inn
Holland Aquatic Center
Haworth Inn
CityFlats Hotel
West Ottawa High School
Holland Christian High School
Holland Chamber of Commerce parking lot
Felch Street Shopping Center
* Installed this week
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