Electric vehicle charging stations at US automation vendor facilities

Yokogawa US is now offering electric vehicle charging stations to employees at its Newnan, GA USA facility. ECOtality -  a leader in clean electric transportation and storage technologies– has installed two Blink® Electric Vehicle (EV) charging stations at Yokogawa Newnan as part of its Electric Vehicle Project. The EV Project is a public-private partnership with the Department of Energy that evaluates the effectiveness of EV charger infrastructure. Yokogawa Newnan is the first in the area to participate in the program and install EV charging stations.

“This is an advantage to me and future EV owners because it extends the range of our cars,” says Jimmy Newman, Engineering Manager for Yokogawa Corporation of America, who owns a Nissan Leaf electric vehicle.

The charging stations installed at Yokogawa are part of ECOtality’s nationwide Blink Network. They are Level 2 stations (240 volt AC input) and will charge any vehicle that uses a standard SAE J1772 connector. Some examples of vehicles using this standard are the Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt, Ford Focus Electric, Toyota Prius Plug-in hybrid, Tesla, Mitsubishi I MiEV, and Fisker Karma. Level 2 stations can fully charge a vehicle like the Nissan Leaf, which has a range of about 75 miles, in about 4 to 5 hours.

The installation supports Yokogawa’s “Go Green Initiative” and enhances the Newnan facility’s ISO1401 requirements. Based on the Yokogawa philosophy which states, “Our goal is to contribute to society through broad-ranging activities in the areas of measurement, control, and information,” one of the Group Green Promotion Committee’s role is to promote environmental conservation and monitor environment data related to CO2 emission and promote CO2 emission reduction."