At its meeting last week, the Turnpike Commission approved a contract with Applegreen Electric to install, operate and maintain electric vehicle charging ports.
The project won't cost the turnpike anything, but the turnpike will earn a percentage of gross electricity sales, turnpike chief financial officer Richard Dreher said.
Dreher said the percentage must still be negotiated.
Each will be a supercharger, which means a full charge will take no more than 30 minutes.
The turnpike has 48 superchargers at six service plazas — eight northbound and eight southbound at Hickory Run in Carbon County; eight at the Peter J. Camiel in Elverson, Chester County; eight at Bowmansville, eastbound, in Lancaster County; and eight at North Somerset, westbound, and eight at South Somerset, eastbound, in Somerset County.
Other plazas have slower chargers, which can take four or five hours. They are at New Stanton, westbound, in Westmoreland County; Oakmont Plum, eastbound, in Allegheny County; King of Prussia, westbound, in Montgomery County; Bowmansville and Peter J. Camiel.
As of the end of 2022, only 42,785 electric vehicles were registered in Pennsylvania, or about 0.4% of all registrations. Only 380 were registered in Luzerne County and only 290 in Lackawanna. Five of nine electric vehicles are registered in Philadelphia and its eight closest neighboring counties, the reason most turnpike chargers are there.
Allentown, the only other service plaza on the turnpike's northeast extension, does not have chargers now.
"Our goal is to have these at every service plaza, just like gas and diesel," Dreher said.
Anecdotally, turnpike officials have heard of lines waiting for charging, but generally it isn't a major problem.
"(Maybe) at Thanksgiving, everybody's on the road headed to grandma's house, but that is the goal. We don't want to have congestion, we don't want to have lines," Dreher said. "When we start hitting certain thresholds of utilization, we will require the company to deploy more chargers so you don't have (lines). Even with a fast charge, it's 15-20 minutes."
Dreher said he isn't sure of the order of installation, but the state Department of Transportation will control the flow of federal funds that help pay the costs.
On Thursday, PennDOT announced the awarding of $2.6 million to Applegreen to install superchargers at Oakmont Plum, Peter J. Camiel, Sideling Hill in Fulton County, Bowmansville and New Stanton.
"Our work to continue investing these funds will not only help build out our electric vehicle charging network, but will create good-paying jobs across Pennsylvania," PennDOT Secretary Mike Carroll said in a statement.
PennDOT is in the midst of adding electric charging stations to interstates so there's one every 50 miles.
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