SDG&E wants to spend $58.4 million to build 2,000 more electric vehicle charging stations
By Rob Nikolewski
San Diego Gas & Electric has already spent $70 million of ratepayer funds on a pilot program that has erected thousands of electric vehicle charging stations in the region. Now the investor-owned utility wants approval to spend an additional $58.4 million to construct a couple of thousand more . . .
If the CPUC approves the proposal, a typical SDG&E residential customer will see an increase on his or her annual bill of:
- 60 cents in 2021
- $3.84 in 2022 and
- $5.64 in 2023 . . .
But Wayne Winegarden, senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute, a San Francisco-based organization that advocates for free-market solutions to policy issues, said ratepayer dollars should not go to building EV charging stations.
“This is infrastructure for a car. Could you imagine if they were subsidizing gas stations?” Winegarden said. “Average ratepayers and low-income customers are just trying to pay their bills to get by the month and the utility is using it in a completely unrelated service that many of them don’t benefit from.”
. . . Should the CPUC approve the $58.4 million Power Your Drive extension, SDG&E ratepayers will have paid $157.2 million in various EV infrastructure projects.
