Louisiana Utility Regulators Pass Rule to Keep Electric Vehicle Charging Competitive

Join daily news updates from CleanTechnica on e mail. Or follow us on Google News!

State regulators have established a coverage they consider will spur extra personal funding in electrical car charging stations in Louisiana — limiting competitors from utility firms.

The Louisiana Public Service Fee adopted a rule Wednesday meant to encourage personal funding within the electrical car charging market by prohibiting the state’s main energy firms from utilizing buyer cash to personal, lease, function, or management EV charging stations.

The fee voted unanimously to create the rule, which aligns with a bipartisan bill the Louisiana Legislature authorized in 2022 encouraging the fee to enact insurance policies that might create an EV charging market based mostly on competitors and free market rules.

Many EV advocates and enterprise homeowners have spent years calling for such a rule, arguing it would permit small companies and retailers to spend money on EV charging stations with the boldness that monopolistic electrical utilities received’t use cash collected from utility clients to unfairly compete towards the personal market.

Based mostly on 2023 information, Louisiana ranks second-worst in the nation for its lack of EV charging stations, with one charger for each 9,144 residents. That compares poorly with the nationwide common of 1 charger per 2,280 residents.

The Charge Ahead Partnershipa coalition of people, companies, and associations working to increase entry to the nation’s EV charging market, applauded the Public Service Fee’s determination.

“The LPSC has sent a clear message today to the investors, entrepreneurs, small businesses and retailers who will build Louisiana’s EV charging marketplace: Louisiana is open for business,” partnership govt director Jay Smith stated in a information launch. “Regulated utilities in other states have discouraged investment by forcing their customers to subsidize utility-owned chargers. Today’s ruling will not only attract investment, it also protects all Louisiana power company customers.”

Beneath the ruling, EV charging suppliers can self-generate electrical energy wanted for his or her stations by assets akin to photo voltaic panels. Beforehand, a charging station may have been regulated as a utility in the event that they generated energy.

The choice drew no opposing testimony from utilities or anybody else in attendance Wednesday.

Final yr, the Public Service Fee issued associated orders permitting non-utilities to resell electrical energy by the kilowatt-hour and directed all electrical utilities underneath its jurisdiction to suggest wholesale charges for EV charging. It was promoted as an essential step to present EV charging station operators some concept of their electrical energy prices.

Regulated utility firms, akin to Entergy and Cleco, can nonetheless function charging stations however have to take action by a separate unregulated subsidiary that doesn’t contact ratepayer cash.

Oklahoma, Nebraska, Texas, and Georgia have all handed related insurance policies.

Wednesday’s determination may put extra strain on the Louisiana Division of Transportation and Growth to start out spending the $73 million it acquired two years in the past underneath the Nationwide Electrical Car Infrastructure (NEVI) program. NEVI is a product of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Legislation that Congress authorized in 2021. Whereas states akin to Ohio, Pennsylvania and others have already constructed some EV charging stations, Louisiana has been slow to spend its portion.

By Wesley Muller, Louisiana Illuminator.

Louisiana Illuminator is a part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit information community supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence.