Lets start off by saying that nobody said anything about providing FREE electricity to charge EVs. Get that out of your head. Public charging stations take credit cards!

Looking into EV charging, there are three levels of charging and for the one hour visit to a rail museum to be beneficial for charging, that means Level 3 which can draw 50KW of power. It also requires a 480VAC three phase connection. For many places that involves the installation of a new three phase service and assumes that your location on the grid even has three phase. Residential areas and some rural areas are usually served by split phase service only, the three phases split with one going down one street, another phase down another street etc. serving as many homes on each to keep the loads somewhat balanced. Bringin three phase to you in such an area involves running wires from the split point to you and that could be a mile or more on your dime. Level 3 can bring a dead battery to 80% in a half hour so if you have existing three phase in your parking lot this can be an attractive option. An article estimates the cost of a level 3 port to be about $50,000 installed.

Now you could opt instead to install a level 2 charger that runs on 240VAC single phase, which is available just about everywhere. But that level only charges at a rate of 20 to 30 miles of range per hour. Is that really worth it to install a charger to gain that small amount of charge? OK lets say your average car gets 30 MPG equivalent on gas so that 1 hour charge would be equivalent to a gallon of gas. You can buy gas for $4.00/gallon. You charge $4.00 for that hour's worth of electricity. How long would it take for you to recoup your original investment of $7,000 in purchasing and installing the station? (you never will)

Unless you get a government grant to install EV stations, their price is well out of the range of our operations and the return on investment is practically nonexistent. Maybe in some areas having EV stations can be considered a "loss leader" to help drive visitorship or your operation is in an area where virtue signalling is a requirement for a successful operation. However for the rest of us, I just don't see how installing EV stations makes economic sense.

Now, if there is a grant program that would fund the installation of EV stations and we can qualify for that, I would be all for it and you would soon see EV stations sitting in front of the J&L Narrow Gauge. But there is no way that I could ever justify footing the bill for one.

It's an interesting idea, but I suggest a careful study of the EV owner demographics within range of your museum and how your museum may or may not appeal to those demographics. I hate to stereotype, but a lot of the EV ownership contingent may not exactly be the folks you want pulling in to charge their save the world EV and be greeted by a coal burning steam locomotive or the heavy smell of diesel in the air.

I would really suggest not stereotyping folks like this. From what I can see EV owners tend to be above average income wise, many with young kids - prime museum demographic, I think.

There's a direct relationship between time and capacity at the charger, and capital and operating cost. So the hospitality industry looks hard at this (charge at a hotel during the night, off-peak rates). The 'fast charging' akin to a gas station is still really prohibitive, a plug of last resort.

I think most rail attractions are somewhere in the middle. Chances are you have to have enough power capacity to run a welder someplace on your site, so the basic drop is there for most. And there's companies out there attempting to make a franchise business out of this looking for sites, although that's still in its infancy. It's not unlike the model for vending machines in some ways.

But if you're in range of a day-trip market where they need to plug in when they arrive to make it back, and will be on site long enough to be measured in hours, not minutes, I'm not so sure this doesn't sweeten the pot as a destination if you can make it work financially.

Where our community is looking at is is at the rather large and growing local complex of micro-brewery, sports shops, municipal parking garage, and boat livery that draws 14,000 visitors per year, primarily day trips meaning the cars are parked all day long. We're 100+ miles out from 3 metro areas; battery range one-way but probably not both ways. Very similar to excursion rail situations.

I'll be honest, I never thought about this until Ford made their all-electric announcement, and thinking that the availability of an attraction with a plug makes it 'make the cut'. We're exploring it anyway, and as the costs and economics get clearer I'll share. The logical conservation of energy arguments aside, it's kind of hit critical mass now whether you personally believe it it or not. I know here it all sounds good until I have to heat up a car in 10-degree weather, run the defrosters, etc. and same argument applies with AC. Maybe hybrid, but all electric? But I'm old enough I never thought I'd see the day when not only did everybody have a computer, but they'd be dwarfed by a battery-powered phone with even more horsepower than a desktop.

Plenty of grant funds in the pipelines at the federal level for the installation of charging stations. Some of the rules haven't been promulgated just yet.

https://highways.dot.gov/newsroom/president-biden-usdot-and-usdoe-announce-5-billion-over-five-years-national-ev-charging

Some food for thought, maybe your museum doesn't have enough power to run their operation or that restoration shop. The grant could be used to bring in a higher voltage from 'down the road' for the charging station but also be tapped for your electric needs.

The government agency I am working for is currently navigating the grant process to install EV chargers.

Do you want to attract the kind of visitors who can afford electric cars (or like clean bathrooms)?
In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, I see banks and eating places that have, or want to attract, the wealthier college and yuppie crowd providing charging ports for electronic devices. Some shopping centers are installing Electric Vehicle charging stations, while others are afraid of offending a gas station that is already a tenant.
What will work for your museum?
Do you want the family with an electric car to park and charge at the restaurant down the street, or in your lot while they ride your Dinner Train?

I don't have an EV myself, but I have been playing with A Better Routeplanner dot com to see if my typical road trips are viable in EVs. You might be able to use that tool to get an idea of whether or not your customers in EVs would actually need to charge or not.That could be very useful for volunteers and/or crew that drive plug-in hybrids - if they charge while they're working, then they can drive 40 miles home on $1 worth of electricity instead of burning 2 gallons of $4 gas.

In my opinion, museums shouldn't provide "their own" charging stations. Too much investment, too much risk, too much maintenance.

But museums should surely find someone who would 'joint venture' the charger, and provide the necessary insurance and maintenance coverage (including the necessary language to hold the museum harmless from any issues involving the charger or its access). That might allow the museum to 'co-brand' that it has charging available for electric vehicles, as a (paid) amenity.

I'd leave it up to individual boards to determine how to reach out to charger providers, and what incentives they would require to allow them to be installed, and perhaps how to get rid of them if they prove a problem or distraction.

I think you were reading my mind!

Everyone read this on the EV charging station idea.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2021/01/25/can-electric-car-charging-be-a-business/?sh=2555b75671e9

An interesting link - from Rick Rowlands' quoted article - an interactive map of charger locations:

https://www.plugshare.com/

You don't have to register to browse charger locations. You do need to zoom in to see what's available in a given area.

I'm surprised how many chargers are available in my rural upstate Pennsylvania area. Including some in Pennsylvania State Parks.

Brian

A charging station would be temporary move, as they'll keep making more. That, and the fact that few electric car drivers seem to realize you won't be seeing free charge stations forever. If electric cars become dominant, all these free charging stations will no longer be free and you'll eventually have to pay for re-charging.
I brought that up with a Tesla owner and he just stood there dumbfounded. He stared at me for a moment, realizing that human nature will surely make charging no longer free and said, "You know, I never thought of that..."

I've never expected our charging to be free. I think it was only ever the early Tesla adopters who did.

I know lots of people who hadn't given it any thought. That Tesla owner's reaction has been very common in my experience. All of them have stopped, thought about it and then agreed that there's no way free charging will always be a thing.

The early Tesla buyers did get lifetime free charging, so I think Tesla itself is partly to blame for the expectation of free charging.