VERGENNES — A charging station for electric vehicles is coming to the Vergennes city green, courtesy of Green Mountain Power.
The station will be installed along North Green Street, just to the left of the information booth, according to City Manager Matt Chabot, and will require a devoted parking space.
Chabot said Green Mountain Power will pay to install the station, with the exception of requiring the city’s Public Works Department to run a conduit for a power line under the sidewalk to the station.
The Vergennes City Council on Sept. 10 unanimously voted to accept the charging station.  
Vergennes will be responsible for an estimated $360 a year of electricity to operate the station. But Chabot said that cost compares favorably to the $1,200 a year the city was planning to pay if Vergennes had been awarded an Electrical Vehicle Supply Equipment grant this past spring for which it unsuccessfully applied.
Chabot said the station will have a Level 2 charger, which according to pluginamerica.org can fully charge a Nissan Leaf in eight hours.
With the only other charging station in the city on Collins Aerospace property, city officials see the station as a public service and as a way to encourage greater use of more fuel-efficient vehicles.
“Clearly renewable energy sources are becoming more and more important to all of us,” Chabot said. “We know we have a lot of vehicular traffic going up and down Main Street on a daily basis, and we’d like to be able to offer this amenity to both our residents and our visitors.”
GMP hopes to install the station before Sept. 25, but Chabot said it will probably be only partly complete and will probably not be operational by then.
GMP and the group Climate Economy Action Center of Addison County are planning an “electric vehicle event” event late on the afternoon on Wednesday, Sept. 25, to coincide with the partial installation of the charging station in Vergennes, according to the group.