July 5, 2023 By Carol Meyer
Another electric vehicle charging station will be installed in a prominent location in town in the near future at a time when EV ownership is growing in Hingham.
While most EV owners in town have home chargers, there are currently three EV charging stations in Hingham — at Carlson Field, Station Street, and South Shore Country Club.
The Select Board recently approved Hingham Municipal Lighting Plant’s proposal to install a fourth station with two ports at Town Hall on the Burr Road side — hopefully sometime this summer.
There are more people driving electric vehicles in Hingham every day, according to Hingham Municipal Lighting Plant Sustainability Coordinator Brianna Bennett. “The number is going up dramatically — it’s at 400 at least,” she told the Select Board.
The average overall charging session lasts about 2 hours and 41 minutes, at a cost of roughly $2.79 to the driver. So far, 138 unique drivers have used this service out of the 323 charging sessions that have occurred since Oct. 2022.
Drivers pay for this service using an EV charging card they can swipe to connect with their credit card, and there are also charging apps.
When asked how the charging stations hold up during cold weather, Bennett explained that HMLP kept that in mind when choosing a manufacturer. “We’re pretty confident that if we have a brutal winter, they will hold up just fine,” she said.
MassEVIP grants have funded the charging station projects so far. In addition to the current and planned four stations, HMLP plans to install level 3 chargers at various locations around town. These charge EVs much faster.
The cost of these additional chargers — which will be located at Station Street and Lynch Field — are also covered by a grant.
The Hingham Police monitor the charging stations to ensure only EV drivers are parking there to charge their vehicles. This means if someone is parked in a designated space but is not charging their car, they can be ticketed for a $50 fine. That said, the number of times when this situation has occurred is minimal, and was usually inadvertent, according to Bennett.
Clearer signage will be installed at the charging stations to ensure people looking for a parking spot realize that these spaces are reserved for EVs that are being charged.
For more information, go to www.hmlp.com/ev-charging-network/.