Moab’s New CCS Charging Station Progresses – CleanTechnica

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For better or worse, Moab, Utah, is more popular than ever. Not only is it a beautiful place itself, with a green, irrigated valley along the bottom and beautiful red rocks on every side, but it’s loaded with opportunities for outdoor recreation. It’s surrounded by national parks like Arches and Canyonlands, state parks like Utahraptor and Dead Horse Point, as well as forests and seemingly endless BLM land open to off-roading and mountain biking. Plus, the Colorado River runs through town, and its canyons give opportunities for scenic drives, rafting, kayaking, and much more.

What does Moab have to do with EVs? I’d say it’s a prime example of a local economy that can slide from ICE to electric with ease. With the growing crop of electric trucks and SUVs, it’s becoming a popular place to go off-roading and sight-seeing, with even Tesla showing off the Cybertruck’s capabilities there. On top of electric cars and trucks, e-bikes are becoming increasingly popular near Moab, but regulations limit the number of trails they can go on.

Until recently, though, getting to that awesome place under electric power could be a bit of a challenge. Tesla put in a basic Supercharger station fairly early on in early 2o14, but the station only had 4 stalls and was a V2 with speeds of up to 120 kW. Later, Rocky Mountain Power put in a ChargePoint CCS/CHAdeMO station, but it got damaged in a flood in August 2022. This meant potentially crowded charging for Tesla vehicles and nothing for non-Tesla Vehicles but a few flaky Level 2 stations and RV parks.

Images by Jennifer Sensiba.

A few months later, in early 2023, a second Supercharger station opened, but this was before Magic Dock was a thing. This was great for Tesla vehicles, especially those that could get the most out of a V3 stall, but still left CCS vehicles without a place to charge.

In mid-2023, Rocky Mountain Power announced that the company would be partnering with Electrify Commercial (Electrify America’s division that sells chargers to businesses and utilities) to put in a number of stations in Utah, including in Moab. This was great news, but stations weren’t slated to be installed until sometime in 2024. So, driving a CCS into the area was still going to be a big slog.

Better news came in September of 2023, when Tesla quietly installed Magic Dock on the V3 station in Moab! This was noticed by the community quickly, and people with CCS vehicles started pouring in to get charged up. But, this meant that everyone, from someone with a fast-charging Cybertruck (that hadn’t come out yet) to a slow-charging Bolt would end up sharing the same 8 stalls. Given how busy Moab can get in the spring and fall, this definitely wasn’t a long-term fix to the problem, even if it helped immensely.

Progress Is Happening On The Rocky Mountain Power Station

When I first wrote a story about Moab getting a new CCS station, I assumed that we’d likely see a 4-stall Electrify Commercial installation, like we’ve seen at so many other places. Plus, the press images had 4 stalls, so that further reinforced that thinking. But, new images from the station’s construction and public documents with the State of Utah show us that there will be 8 stalls, including at least one pull-through charger!

The initial plans say that the 4 stalls were for sure and another four could be added without disrupting the current charging layout. But, other images at Plugshare show that the site does indeed have the 8 stalls going in, as the extra 4 are already installed.

While one stall is definitely configured as a pull-thru, the long cord on the latest generation Electrify America stations gives the ability to plug in a vehicle without unhooking its trailer in at least one other spot if you go around behind the little island. 

Another great bit of news is the location. Instead of cramming the station in somewhere in town, RMP and Electrify Commercial chose a parking lot right next to where US-191 crosses the Colorado. This means easier access, especially during the busiest weekends when the town gets crowded. It also means that people passing through town and going to Highway 128 (the road that goes up the canyon instead of up to the interstate) don’t need to go all the way into town.

Even more importantly, it’s close to one of the biggest drivers of traffic in the area: Arches National Park. 

The new station is right around the corner (well, two corners) from the main entrance to Arches. So, drivers can top up a bit before going in so there are no worries about range when driving around on the 36 miles of road the park has inside (round trip).

Another great thing about the station is that it’ll make it easier for people to use an EV as a power source for camping. While Dead Horse Point State Park and a couple of RV parks have 50-amp service that can be used to charge cars and power campsites, almost everything else out that way only offers dry camping. When people can plug their campsite or RV into an EV, being able to charge up relatively close to the campsite means a lot less “A/C Anxiety” or “Heat Anxiety,” depending on the season!

By far, though, the biggest thing this station will offer is badly-needed capacity in the area. With only 8 other CCS chargers and 12 Supercharger stalls, adding another 8 doubles the CCS capacity and ups the capacity for Tesla vehicles from 12 to 20 (a 66% increase). This means that as EV adoption grows, Moab won’t become a place with lines for charging nearly as quickly.

More Is Still Needed

While this is going to present a major improvement, it’s one that future growth in EV ownership could easily overwhelm. According to one local official, the town has somewhere between 3 and 5 million visitors per year. The full-time population is only about 5,300, but those visitation numbers mean that during the most popular seasons, there are between 20,000 and 40,000 people visiting at any given time!

Even a town of 50,000 people wouldn’t need so much charging, but if most of the people there at any given time didn’t have a home to charge at, you end up needing a lot more charging than towns this size generally need. If all 20-40 thousand visitors were arriving in EVs, there would end up being a much greater need for charging, even to take care of daily needs.

So, if you’re a local business in Moab or a charging company looking for a profitable place to put chargers, definitely consider putting some in!

Featured image: a screenshot from a public document by the State of Utah.