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By EMILY REED | Special to the Reporter

HELENA – The city of Helena has a new electric vehicle charging station installed at the sports complex.

The new charging station, installed last week, will provide residents and guests to the sports complex the opportunity to charge their electric vehicles at a low rate.

“We are really excited to be able to have something like this in Helena,” Mayor Brian Puckett said. “This allows for a convenience if you are at the sports complex for a baseball game or maybe a soccer practice and you need to charge your car while you are there.”

Puckett said the station was awarded to the city through a grant by ADECA.

“I submitted four different applications for places throughout the city, and three of them were turned down, but the fourth was awarded which was at the sports complex,” Puckett said. “There are some charging stations in Alabaster, but other than that, you have to drive to downtown Birmingham for a public charging station.”

The charging station is run through a company called Charge Point, which will handle the payment portions.

Puckett said people can either use the Charge Point app or directly pay from Apple Pay or other payment options.

“We know this will not be a revenue source for the city, but it is more a convenience,” Puckett said. “It will be very minimal what we draw in, but we thought Helena would make a great place to have one.”

Puckett said in doing some of the traffic studies for the grant, Helena was the second highest city with registered vehicles outside of the city of Hoover.

“This is obviously a need the residents in our city have to charge their electric vehicles,” Puckett said. “The charging station is just the first of many more to come for all of the public to be able to use. We know the success of this charging station will be the catalyst to add more.”

The current charging station is classified as Level 2 and Puckett said he anticipates looking at different types of charging stations to include throughout the city in the future.

The location at the sports complex is equipped with two charging parking spots within the public parking lot.

The fee to charge the cars includes:

• $3.60 for 1 hour
• $7.20 for 2 hours
• $10.80 for 3 hours
• $14.40 for 4 hours
• $18.00 for 5 hours
• $21.60 for 6 hours
• $25.20 for 7 hours
• $28.80 for 8 hours
• $32.40 for 9 hours
• $49.09 for 10 hours

There is a 3 minute grace period available.