(Stock photo by Seksan Mongkhonkhamsao via Getty Images)
COLUMBIA — South Carolina lags behind most of the country in availability of electric vehicle charging stations. One South Carolina senator thinks gas station owners will step up to meet the need — as long as they’re not competing with power companies in the process.
Sen. Larry Grooms filed legislation blocking utilities from billing all of their customers for the cost of public electric vehicle chargers, arguing it’s unfair to small businesses owners that may wish to operate charging stations of their own.
The Bonneau Beach Republican previously owned convenience stores and said he’s heard from other owners interested in adding chargers. But those business owners have balked, worried about going up against chargers built by power providers and government-funded grant programs.
Grooms pointed to a pilot program run by Duke Energy as an example. Utility regulators allowed the company to install and operate 60 electric vehicle chargers around the state. Duke spread the cost of building those charging stations to customers’ power bills, Grooms said.
“Electric vehicles are coming to South Carolina, but more investment is needed to grow the adoption of this evolving technology and the benefits it brings to the state,” Duke Energy’s South Carolina president, Mike Callahan, said when the program began in 2020. “These pilot programs will help prepare us to meet the challenge to ensure we can keep up with increasing demand for electrification.”
Grooms said state-owned utility company Santee Cooper considered a similar effort in 2023, prompting him to file legislation at the time. That bill never got a hearing.
He said he re-filed the bill this year, which went before the Senate’s Transportation Committee this week, to prevent other power companies from launching their own efforts.
Meanwhile, South Carolina lost out on some $70 million in federal funding meant to increase the number of electric vehicle chargers along U.S. interstate highways.
The funding was part of the Biden administration’s hallmark green energy spending package. But newly elected President Donald Trump paused the payout of any unspent dollars left in that program. South Carolina had yet to tap into its share.
South Carolina remains 40th in the nation and next to last in the Southeast when it comes to the number of fast chargers per capita, according to the most recent report issued by the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
The state also trails in the number of electric vehicles sold.
South Carolina has about 1,640 public charging ports at just over 600 locations, according to the U.S. Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, compared to 10,500 in Florida, 5,435 in Georgia and 4,575 in North Carolina.
In the Southeast, only Alabama has fewer ports — 1,043.