A network of Brightfield-owned DC Fast Chargers now exists in NC and TN! Brightfield successfully installed units in Waynesville, Asheville, Charlotte, Greensboro, Hillsborough, Chapel Hill, Durham, Salisbury, Dallas, Wadesboro, Mathews and teh greater Knoxville area. These stations can charge any fast-charge equipped EV up in under 30 minutes—cutting edge technology spurring EV market growth.
Brightfield has a vision: a multi-million dollar regional EV infrastructure roll-out we call the Solar Driven® Experience. During the first phase of this project, BTS will work with EV manufacturers to secure funding to make the Asheville region the nation’s first EV travel destination—3 million visitors to our Blue Ridge Mountain home will have the opportunity to rent an EV and drive on sunshine.
This phase will take approximately 2 years to install 28 Brightfield® Charging Stationsequipped with a total of 162 EV chargers and 140kW of solar fuel capacity, enough to provide 840,000 EV miles traveled.
These Brightfield® Charging Stations will be deployed at travel destinations, hotels and downtown commercial districts. This project will provide the auto industry with unprecedented EV marketing, consumer test drive and market research opportunities.By 2016, it is forecast that over 20,000 EVs will be owned by consumers in Asheville’s primary tourism feeder markets. Given that the consumer demographic and psychographic that the auto industry is targeting for early EV adoption match the demographic and psychographic targeted by the Asheville area tourism industry, Brightfield TS will initiate the second phase of the Solar Driven® Experience: install 12 DC Fast Charge Brightfields® at strategic locations between the feeder markets and Asheville, and install 500 kilowatts of new solar capacity. Completion of this phase will enable consumers to take their new EV on vacation to a destination equipped to provide them with a secure and exciting automobile adventure, and will position Brightfield TS to replicate the Solar Driven® Experience across North Carolina, the country’s 6th most visited state.
The Solar Driven® Experience follows efforts nationwide to create a truly vibrant EV market opportunities. Brightfield TS is bringing together the Asheville region’s economic engine, tourism, with clean tech cluster development efforts, regional municipalities, national parks, hotels, travel destinations, and rental car companies to approach auto manufactures and grant makers for EV infrastructure funding. Brightfield TS is setting the stage for a consumer EV experience that will propel the EV market forward and prove beyond doubt that America can drive on sunshine.
Building off of Brightfield® Transportation Solutions’ Phase 1 success brokering public/private partnerships and deploying publicly accessible grid-tied solar EV charging stations, Brightfield Transportation Solutions (BTS) is launching a multi-stage regional EV infrastructure roll-out we call the Solar Driven® Experience. Phase 2: BTS is partnering with the North Carolina Plug-in Electric Vehicle Task Force, NC Clean Energy Technology Center, Advanced Energy, NC Department of Transportation, NovaCharge and Nissan North America to make North Carolina one of the nation’s most innovative and vibrant EV markets. BTS will install 11 DC Fast Chargers—technology able to charge an EV in under 20 minutes—at strategic downtown locations in cities across the state. This will mark one the largest DC Fast Charger roll-outs happening nationally and position the emerging North Carolina EV market for accelerated growth. In 2013, nationwide EV sales increased 241% adding another 47,600 vehicles to America’s roads. Data shows that EV sales are strongest in states where EV infrastructure has been deployed. By bringing DC Fast Charger technology to key North Carolina markets, Brightfield is driving market growth, which in turn will increase demand for Brightfield Charging Stations. Brightfield will charge consumers to plug into our stations to garner revenue while providing a necessary charging service to EV consumers at approximately $2.20 per gallon gasoline equivalent. Phase 3: BTS will partner with investors to deploy our patented solar-integrated Brightfield Charging Stations around and above the DC Fast Chargers. In addition to the DC Fast Charger units, these Brightfield Charging Stations will be equipped with networked Level 2 chargers and 30 kW of solar panels producing enough solar fuel to provide North Carolinians with 180,000 fossil fuel free EV miles annually. In addition to generating solar fuel, Brightfield canopies protect equipment and consumers from the elements, and create an iconic and innovative charging station. Brightfields are grid-tied, so solar power is generated and put on the grid whenever the sun is shining and electricity is dispensed from the grid to vehicles rain or shine, day or night. Brightfields provide consumers, businesses, and communities with the environmental, social and economic benefits of driving on sunshine.These Brightfield Charging Stations will be deployed at high utilization downtown commercial locations in the greater Raleigh, Charlotte, Greensboro, Winston and Asheville Metro Areas to accelerate state-wide EV adoption and take our innovative zero-emission Solar Driven Experience to scale.This Brightfield DC Fast Charge roll-out will support EV sales while bolstering consumer confidence and excitement by deploying the charging infrastructure needed to ensure a safe, secure, zero-emission driving experience.
Stan Cross, co-founder and principal of Brightfield TS, spoke at the Clean Cities Coalition designation that announced Asheville Metro Area’s inclusion in the U.S. Department of Energy program. The Asheville Citizen Times feature includes some of Cross’ comments:
BENT CREEK —Question: What saved 500,000 gallons of petroleum and kept an estimated 4,000 tons of greenhouses gases from escaping into the atmosphere over Western North Carolina in 2011?Answer: Efforts in the Asheville area to promote alternative fuels, cleaner cars and better air quality for Buncombe, Haywood, Henderson, Madison and Transylvania counties.Those efforts, which have been underway for eight years, were recognized last week when the U.S. Department of Energy officially designated the Land-of-Sky Clean Vehicle Coalition as the nation’s 85th Clean Cities Coalition during a ceremony at the N.C. Arboretum. The designation makes the coalition eligible for more grants to accelerate the process of improving air quality.
View the full article on the Citizen Times website.
Brightfield founder Matt Johnson teaches GO participants about EV charger technology
Brightfield TS was awarded a NC Green Business Fund grant because our vision and execution plan are solid and our community partnerships are robust. One of our proudest partnerships is with Green Opportunities:
Green Opportunities (GO) is an Asheville-based community-based development organization dedicated to improving lives, communities and the health of the planet through innovative green collar job training and placement programs. GO is committed to empowering low-income neighborhoods in Asheville by preparing residents for well-paying jobs, completing hands-on projects that make these neighborhoods safer and more sustainable, and linking the residents of these neighborhoods to jobs and other community resources that lead to greater empowerment.
Local youth participating in GO have engaged with Brightfield TS to learn about emerging EV infrastructure technologies and the integration of EV charging and solar power production.
“Its great to teach GO participants about the future of transportation,” says Brightfield TS founder Matt Johnson. “Its inspiring how eager they are to learn.”
Dan Leroy, GO co-founder adds, “What Brightfield TS is doing is revolutionary; merging the alternative transportation and renewable energy sectors to create sustainable transportation solutions that are designed and manufactured here in Asheville. GO is excited to be a part of it.”
As Brightfield TS grows, we will engage more deeply with GO by offering participants apprenticeships so they can learn by doing and acquire the skills needed to be employed in the growing EV infrastructure and solar power installation job markets. In doing so, we will be a part of transforming our city into a more just, equitable and resilient community. From our perspective, that’s what doing sustainability is all about.
Brightfield TS and Eaton teamed up with UNCA to install chargers on campus.
In cooperation with Eaton Corporation and UNCA, Brightfield TS is proud to announce that our Eaton Pow-R-Stations are fully functional. These 2 chargers represent our 4th site in Asheville. “We selected the Reuters Center because a high percentage of Center participants drive hybrid electric vehicles. When we did our site analysis, we found that almost 10% of the vehicles in the lot were hybrids. That indicated to us that the Reuters Center was a likely early EV adopter hub,” commented Stan Cross, Co-Founder of BTS.
These chargers are FREE to use through July of 2012.
Left- Stand-Alone Brightfield Charging Bollard, Right- Brightfield T1. Both equipped with Eaton Pow-R-Station
“As interest in EVs grows, the Brightfield® T1 is a demonstration of the smallest of our Brightfield products, ideal for homes and tight infill locations. Its 2 kilowatt array will create enough electricity to drive the average electric car on sunshine 10,000 miles annually. This is an important installation because it also shows our stand-alone patent-pending Brightfield® Charging Bollard”, reports Matt Johnson, Co-Founder of BTS. The Bollard is an identifiable and durable mounting system for electric vehicle chargers in institutional and municipal settings.
Kudos to all involved in the Dec. 12 unveiling of Asheville’s first public charging station for photovoltaic-powered electric vehicles.
BioWheels RTS (now Brightfield™ Transportation Solutions) and its partners deserve much praise for offering a viable future for driving on sunshine, rather than depending on oil from foreign suppliers who sometimes are enemies of America.
Plugged in at the event were a Tesla, a Volt, two Leafs and a hobbyist’s 1970 Jeep conversion.
Some critics have claimed electric vehicles are incapable of providing the driving range and horsepower needed in today’s society. Others have said that EVs merely replace oil with coal.
However, the driving range and horsepower of EVs is ever-increasing and, even if the grid were totally coal-fueled, carbon emmisions would be a wash with oil. And experts say criteria pollutants and primary energy consumption would be reduced by a shift to EVs.
The area’s coal grid fraction is 60 percent and falling — and installing PV to offset EV energy consumption will reduce that fraction.
While critics contend that EVs do not pay for themselves, it’s clear to us that technological advances — and dwindling oil supplies and soaring prices — likely will eventually make EVs economical.
What’s more, the compact size of the EVs that boosts their performance will reduce the costs in volume manufacture.
Best of all, EVs could help the U.S. attain its long-desired goal of energy independence.
Brightfield is proud to have forged public/private partnerships with Asheville City, Buncombe County and UNC Asheville that are resulting in publicly accessible Brightfield™ Charging Stations. These partnerships are possible thanks to the hard work of staff and administrators within each organization who believe in Brightfield’s Solar Driven vision and championed the cause.
The result of these collaborative initiatives is the foundation of a region-wide EV charging network—a vital part of a future viable EV market. Building off of years of work led by Land of Sky Regional Council and Advantage West, our community now has the public/private partnership templates that can be used to grow our EV capacity. Brightfield is using these templates to engage other communities in the Asheville Metro Area to support a regional EV charging network, so EV drivers can leave home confident that their charging needs will be met.
Brightfield is working on regional EV planning with Land of Sky Regional Council through the Clean Cities Clean Vehicles initiative and the regional EV Committee. Together, our organizations are helping to make western North Carolina a state-wide beacon for EV readiness. Land of Sky has the capacity and state-wide network to both develop a regional EV readiness model and proliferate that model throughout NC.Brightfield is assisting the effort by installing Brightfield Charging Stations and through the use of our Transportation Infrastructure Modeling (TIM) tool that analyzes demographic, industry forecast, and EV cost and benefit data to determine the strategic location and quantity of EV chargers necessary to meet impending demand. The TIM tool can be used on a micro level to help fleet managers determine the most cost effective way to transition fleets to electric vehicles overtime, and on the macro level to determine how much solar capacity is needed to provide renewable fuel for vehicle miles driven, how much ground-level pollution and greenhouse gas emissions are deferred regionally, and how to make best uses of resources to get EV chargers where they’re needed most.The TIM tool is a valuable part of the EV readiness quiver. Brightfield will continue to work with Land of Sky and the new Evolve Energy Partnerships initiative to ensure that the outcome of our collective EV efforts attains the environmental, social and economic benefits we seek including reduced pollution, affordable vehicles and fuel, and regional job and manufacturing growth.
Brightfield Transportation Solutions is proud to have forged public/private partnerships with Asheville City, Buncombe County and UNC Asheville that have resulted in installed publicly accessible Brightfield™ Charging Stations. These partnerships are possible thanks to the hard work of staff and administrators within each organization who believe in the solar powered EV vision and championed the cause.
The result of these collaborative initiatives is the foundation of a region-wide EV charging network—a vital part of a viable EV market. Our community now has the public/private partnership templates that can be used to grow our EV capacity.
Brightfield is using these templates to engage with the Asheville Metro Area to grow the network of chargers, so EV drivers can leave home confident that their charging needs will be met.
