Doral Council Approves Upgrade of City’s EV Charging Stations
DORAL, FL – Yesterday, the City of Doral Council approved unanimously the item proposed by councilwoman Nicole Reinoso to upgrade the city’s EV charging stations.
Specifically, through resolution 25-6106, it was requested for the city manager to assess the cost and benefit of upgrading the electric vehicle charging stations at City Hall and expanding the installation of charging stations in city parks.
“I spoke to a few of our residents and one of the concerns was that we are a smart city, this is 2025, and it doesn’t take multiple hours to charge a vehicle,” said Nicole Reinoso in her opening remarks.
“In our city building, we have a few chargers, they take an excessive amount of time to charge. So, I think we need to revisit the charging stations that we have and also provide opportunities to our residents of having additional charging stations at our parks. We want to make it easy for people to come visit our city, charge up their cars and not have an issue with that,” added the councilwoman.
On this, Carlos Arroyo, public works director, showed in a presentation that the Government Center parking garage has four chargers, the Police Training & Community Center has two and Doral Central Park West Parking Lot, another four.
“Currently, the service is free for everyone— chargers managed by City of Doral only—. So, you know, the average cost at the Government Center for kilowatts per hour is 25 cents and the actual energy dispense, the FPL bill, approximately totals $3,000 for those vehicles,” said Carlos, while also noting the great environmental effect of those stations.
“As an interesting note, every passenger vehicle emits approximately 4.6 tons of carbon dioxide per year, and based on this value, the city has helped prevent the emission of approximately half a million pounds of greenhouse gases. This is like planting 5,800 trees and letting them grow for 10 years.”
Considering these numbers and facts, Carlos continued saying the proposal discussed with the city manager is to look at the possibility of charging per use under an established rate “to recoup some of these fundings and also to promote, transfer, use, and prevent or minimize abuse.”
He gave as examples the EV’s infrastructure of cities like Miami Springs and Coral Gables, and, locally, of Downtown Doral and Paseo Boulevard. “They charge $1.25 per hour and provide a 30-minute grace period, and after the time has expired, the rate increases, per hour,” said Carlos. “As per the Car and Driver magazine, the average charging cost in Miami it’s 36 cents kilowatts per hour, and the average charging cost in the nation is 55 cents.”
Carlos also clarified this isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution, but rather a starting point to consider several options like, for example, charging a fee to some vehicles or providing a couple of hours free and then instituting a rate.
In line with the above— said Carlos— the City of Doral applied for a grant called the Energy Efficiency Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) in the amount of $140,950 that was, indeed, awarded by the Department of Energy (DOE).
The plan is to use those funds to install and improve the City’s EV charging stations infrastructure. “That’s going to give us 17 ports,” concluded Carlos.
Following his presentation, councilwoman Reinoso asked the city manager to consider not charging a fee to City employees, either in the city building or at parks, which Zeida Sardiñas said it’s a possibility that has been already discussed with certain companies subject to a responsible use from residents.
“We prepared this brief presentation for the meeting to inform you, but, obviously, this would come back should we decide to actually institute a policy and do everything else,” Sardiñas said.
It wasn’t immediately established during the meeting, what are the next steps or when can residents expect to have access to the new charging stations.
Photo as reference by: Unsplash.com