It sounds like a simple enough project. Put solar panels over 10 parking spaces on the lot of the Shelby Farms Park Visitors Center and let electric vehicles and hybrids using electricity recharge there.

Representatives of numerous agencies joined Shelby Farms Park Conservancy officials Tuesday to break ground on West Tennessee’s first solar-powered electric-car charging station, which will be outside the Visitors Center. 
(Photo: Lance Murphey)

The exact undertaking behind West Tennessee’s first SMART electric vehicle charging station at the park, however, is more complex.

What is recharging the cars will be a combination of solar power and stationary batteries that also send their power to the local power grid of Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division that offsets total use of the more conventional power source.

The SMART (Smart Modal Area Recharge Terminal) was developed by the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Electric Power Research Institute, both based in Knoxville. They wanted an area where EVs would be recharged during daylight hours not just because it lends itself to solar energy. They also wanted to get more information about the impact of electric vehicles on the power grid during the day – the peak hours for energy usage.

The stations will collect information that EPRI senior project manager John Halliwell said will be used to gauge how and when the station is being used.

“We’re primarily looking for ways to offset daytime charging,” he said. “So this is a way to experiment with using solar to offset the consumer that wants to charge during the daytime when you are out and about, like at a workplace or a facility like this or a mall. This is a way to look at how to offset that so we don’t impact the grid. We don’t want to grow our energy usage during the day when we have our peak loads. We prefer a nighttime load. This is a way to look at daytime charging and offset that.”

The batteries serve the role of an offset, and the EPRI believes the combination of solar and battery technology could enjoy wider applications in coming years.

Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell speaks at a groundbreaking for West Tennessee’s first solar-powered electric-car charging station outside the Shelby Farms Park Visitors Center.
(Photo: Lance Murphey)

“How many of you are old enough to recall when there was no such thing as unleaded gasoline?” Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. said at the groundbreaking. “People said, ‘What happens if I get to a place and they don’t have unleaded?’ I’m sure there are some skeptics out there right now saying nobody will ever use this.”

The questions about certainty of supply are central to the efforts of EV advocates to build a network of charging stations through several efforts including one that has brought a public non-solar charging station to the Peabody Place garage and other business locations.

Shelby Farms Park Conservancy executive director Laura Adams said there is already enough EV traffic in the park that the conservancy has set aside special parking places at the parking lot for the park playground and they might do the same in the visitors center parking lot beyond the 10 SMART spaces.

“We are encouraging and doing everything we can to get people here not by their cars,” Adams said. “But still, because we are a regional park, we are always going to have the majority of our people arrive by car. This is certainly a step in the right direction to encourage more people to move toward renewables.”

The green hard hats at this week’s groundbreaking at the park were the same ones worn at the groundbreaking for the park’s now completed playground. They were pink for the playground event.