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Rocky Mountain Power wants you to buy an electric car, and the utility might even pay you for it.
There are about 1,500 electric vehicles in Utah right now, a number Rocky Mountain Power would like to grow to 20,000 by 2025, said Steven Anderton, managing director of support services for the utility.
"We've very interested in electric vehicles," Anderton said during a panel at the Governor's Air and Energy Symposium on Tuesday. "It's not a new technology, but it's had a hard time catching on, until recently."
Anderton said Rocky Mountain Power sees electric cars as a potential win-win-win situation. The company believes more cars would result in a net reduction of emissions in Utah, especially along the Wasatch Front, while at the same time saving the average Utah family money on transportation costs.
As for Rocky Mountain Power itself?
"The more [electric] vehicles everyone runs out to buy, that can only be good for our business," Anderton said.
But Rocky Mountain Power recognizes that there are several barriers to entry that might prevent Utahns from buying into the electric vehicle trend. Anderton said the company has a plan to address some of those barriers, including the lack of access to appropriate charging stations.
Rocky Mountain Power plans to offer refunds to help some residents install charging stations at their own homes, and backed legislation that allows Utah businesses to sell electricity for a profit without being regulated as utilities. It's also looking at incorporating a time-of-use component into its rate structure that would decrease the price of electricity at night, when it's used to charge electric cars for the next day's travels.
As for those with concerns about using coal-fired power to charge their green cars, Anderton said Rocky Mountain Power has a solution for that, too — the company is talking about giving those who drive electric cars priority access to the company's new subscriber solar program, or even giving them free solar-power blocks .
"If you really want to run that car in the cleanest way possible," he said, "you will have an opportunity to lock in solar power at an economical rate for a number of years."