{"id":142788,"date":"2021-11-11T14:07:13","date_gmt":"2021-11-11T19:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=142788"},"modified":"2021-12-09T09:40:27","modified_gmt":"2021-12-09T14:40:27","slug":"student-energy-puts-a-change-into-new-electric-vehicle-stations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2021\/11\/11\/student-energy-puts-a-change-into-new-electric-vehicle-stations\/","title":{"rendered":"Student energy puts a charge into new electric-vehicle stations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In 2020, three Bates students conducted a college-wide survey of students and employees and found that 20 of 231 respondents had electric vehicles. There were already 10 charging stations for EVs on campus, so the math for finding an open plug wasn\u2019t bad. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as she looked at the results, Tamsin Stringer \u201922, who got involved in campus environmental groups practically as soon as she landed in Lewiston from Bloomington, Ind., was thinking ahead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fully 50 percent of the campus community said they were actively considering the idea of getting an electric vehicle and 26 percent said they planned to purchase an electric car in the next five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd that number is just going to keep going up,\u201d said Stringer, a member of the student task force for green initiatives, the EcoReps, since her first year, as well as a member of the college’s Committee on Environmental Sustainability. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So she set herself a goal: Help her college add more EV plugins. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Ecorep
Tamsin Stringer \u201922 of Bloomington, Ind., poses next to a 32-amp Enel X JuiceBox,\u00a0one of the new electric vehicle charging stations behind Underhill Arena. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Students have long been leaders in sustainability on campus<\/a>, driving initiatives on clean energy, sustainable food sources, and reducing waste on campus. Stringer chose Bates in part because of its efforts toward becoming sustainable (Bates achieved carbon neutrality in May 2019, her first year).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stringer and Domi Frideger \u201921 of Durango, Calif., wrote grant requests to Maine\u2019s largest electrical utility company, Central Maine Power, as well as to Efficiency Maine, the primary administrator for energy efficiency programs in Maine, making a case to both that Bates needed additional funding for the chargers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were successful, and the college was awarded two grants from CMP and Efficiency Maine, totaling about $36,000. Both entities offer competitive grants for charger installations to increase local access and destination charging. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stringer and Frideger were also awarded a project grant from Bates, through the Green Innovation Grant program. The Bates grants, up to $2,000 each, help connect students passionate about advancing sustainability and green energy to resources, and according to Tom Twist, Bates\u2019 sustainability manager, the proposals can often turn into larger projects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think it’s a good and useful experience to see an idea through the entire process \u2014 from conception, to refinement, to fundraising, to actual physical implementation of something that hadn’t existed before,\u201d Twist said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bates continues to thread sustainability throughout the college \u2014 from academics and student activism to dining and facilities operations. For those efforts, the college earned a Gold rating from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, considered the premier benchmarking agency. In fact, Bates’ performance was in the top 10 among all baccalaureate colleges in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Ecorep
EcoRep Tamsin Stringer \u201922 of Bloomington, Ind., poses at the new electric vehicle charging stations behind Underhill Arena. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The four new chargers were installed near Underhill Arena mere weeks ago, bringing the total number of EV plugins on campus to 14. The chargers are open to both the campus and the surrounding community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These new units have serious juice, hence their name, Enel X Juiceboxes. EV chargers are described by levels: 1, 2, and 3. In simplest terms, each level delivers a faster charge. At Bates, all chargers are Level 2 chargers, and the newer ones, the Enel X Juicebox chargers, are also networked, smart, and Wi-Fi enabled, which allows the flow of electricity to be regulated and helps track output for easier billing. And for the user, there’s a smartphone JuicePass app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really important for Bates to be implementing infrastructure for electric vehicles,\u201d Stringer said. For one, EV sales in the U.S. continue their steady growth<\/a>, and Stringer and others want Bates to help lead \u201cthe transformation of the marketplace\u201d from fossil fuels to electricity. \u201cAs an educational institution, Bates is in a unique position to introduce new drivers to electric vehicles.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI feel like I\u2019ve gained so many skills, even talking to the people running EV infrastructure companies. I think you definitely need those skills to make real change.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

For Stringer, this project came with a bonus: It gave her vital experience for her chosen career, as she has been pulling off exactly the kind of work she might encounter in the field of clean energy, like calling EV charger companies and compiling cost-benefit analyses for the different EV charger models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI feel like I\u2019ve gained so many skills, even talking to the people running EV infrastructure companies,\u201d Stringer said. \u201cI think you definitely need those skills to make real change.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Ecorep
Three plug-in electric vehicles access the EV chargers outside Underhill Arena: a Ford C-Max Energi, Hyundai Ioniq, and a Hyundai Kona. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Two other Green Innovation Grants awarded this past year helped increase the growing space for the Bates community garden, the Plot, and add a mix of vegetables, wildflowers and native plants to an area behind houses on Frye Street, to increase biodiversity, improve soil quality, and support native pollinators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year also saw a plan developed two years ago bear fruit. In 2019\u201320, Stringer, Frideger, and Emma Wheeler \u201920 \u2014 joining a similar proposal by Dianna Georges \u201922 and Noah Pott \u201922 \u2014 earned a grant of $3,600, one of the largest Green Innovation Grants ever, to fund the installation of electric hand dryers<\/a> in two campus buildings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a \u201chuge success,\u201d says Stringer, and now five major campus residence halls feature the dryers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTamsin is a remarkable student,\u201d Twist said. \u201cI have been amazed at the level of impactful projects that she has been able to accomplish in her four years at Bates. She will truly leave her mark on the college in a way that would have seemed impossible just four years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One finding from a Bates survey on electric vehicle use gave Tamsin Stringer ’22 a jolt: Bates needed more EV plugins, so she set out to help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1422,"featured_media":142790,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[232,217,11009],"tags":[3125,11532,11177],"class_list":["post-142788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment-sustainability","category-science-technology","category-the-college","tag-ecoreps","tag-green-innovation-grants","tag-tom-twist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1422"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142788"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143391,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142788\/revisions\/143391"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}