Robert the Tesla Destination Charger program may be an option. If the park is
willing to host and fill out a one page form Tesla will donate a few Tesla
chargers along with a J-1772 charger AND they will pay for an electrician to
install it. I have done with at Rush Street Restaurant and at Meadowview
conference center.
From: knoxev-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <knoxev-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of
Robert Cole
Sent: Sunday, November 01, 2020 4:36 PM
To: knoxev@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [knoxev] Campground Chargers
I noticed while I was at Elkmont that they have a stretch of “walk to”
campsites where the power lines for the store/ranger station/etc run along the
road and there’s even two sets of parking with transformers immediately
adjacent. Note that most of the NPS campgrounds in the area do not have any
electric sites. These would be the perfect spots to put some EVSE’s (would
need a meter/breaker panel and a short run of direct bury to each one).
I had a short conversation with a ranger and got a contact number for the park
liaison, and wanted to see if there was any interest in trying to coordinate
installing some EVSE’s. I don’t know if it’d be something a sponsor (TVA,
other organizations) would be interested in or not, but I’d be happy to
coordinate some sort of a fundraiser if there is any interest from the KEVA
side. My thought for keeping it cheap would be, if the NPS would be
interested, there could be an add-on fee to access the charging station (combo
lock) and the sites could be annotated similar to the accessible sites (don’t
book unless you have an EV or it’s the last site available).
Also related: one of the other rangers commented that there were some
commercial chargers at a visitor center that were removed by the vendor due to
lack of use. My immediate thought was - of course, as interesting as the
visitor centers are, a Level 2 EVSE isn’t going to supply a useful charge in
the time you’d (want to) be at one.
Any thoughts? Has anyone tried to work with the NPS before? I’m sure that
there my be other sites in GSMP that would have similar ease of installation,
but this looked too ideal to pass along with out asking the question.
