JEA needs your help if you drive an electric vehicle and it could mean earning a few extra dollars in your pocket.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — You can help ensure Jacksonville’s electric grid is able to power the city into the future.
Florida is second in the nation for electric vehicle sales. If you drive an electric vehicle, you can sign up for a new JEA study and get a few dollars in your pocket while doing so.
JEA is expecting the number of battery-only electric vehicles to increase by almost 500 percent by the end of this decade. What will that do to the city’s electric grid? That’s what JEA will study and prepare for now.
Tony Reynolds with JEA says it’s vital that they understand how an increase like that could impact the city’s power grid. He says first, they must understand where people are charging their vehicles.
“Eventually in the future, if the growth projections are right, we’re going to get cluster charging,” Reynolds said. “We’re going to get two or three homes on a single transformer with maybe multiple EVs all trying to charge at the same time. That would overload the current residential transformers and that current infrastructure.”
Reynolds says the study to stop this from happening will also save you money because if they’re able to make changes now, they may be able to avoid big spending on infrastructure later.
You could get $7 a month as the study will last a year. JEA needs 400 people before they can start it.
To enroll in the study, a JEA spokesperson says EV drivers should connect their EV to the Optiwatt mobile app or Optiwatt’s desktop app. Optiwatt is a company JEA is partnering with for the study.
