(The Center Square) -Washington state plans to electrify private and public transportation sectors and spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on charging infrastructure are still facing numerous logistical and practical challenges.
One example was highlighted at a Thursday meeting of the Electric Vehicle Coordinating Council meeting by Puget Sound Solar General Manager and Solar Educator Alisha Turpin. She told the council that a state agency hired contractors to install a large fleet charging station but overlooked required cellular-coverage check in the design phase that left the station inoperable for months when it was finally installed.
“The station had no connectivity and was basically useless,” she said. “It’s really critical that you follow all manufacturer design guidance and that the station is configured exactly the way it was intended to be used.”
The state looks to re-appropriate millions of existing funds for transportation electrification, including $74 million for the state’s EV Charging Program and $160 million for several WSDOT charging programs. The council estimates the state will need three million charging ports by the time the ban on new gasoline vehicles takes effect in 2035.
Aside from issues such as copper thefts that have left many charging stations inoperable, their initial installations involve numerous parties such as the contractors and local utility providers. Department of Commerce EV Incentives Program Manager Mara MacDonell said at the council meeting a project can be undermined or delayed if one of them drops the ball.
“There has been some instances where…we send an installer to the site and the utility doesn’t show up,” she said. “That’s burning through labor hours that we didn’t account for. It really comes down to communication. I’ve seen email threads where one party didn’t respond for six months. Things just get really lost or someone doesn’t show up. It’s a lot to manage.”
Another challenge facing state planning are delays in electrical transformer upgrades necessary to support certain types of charging stations with Turpin noting one charging station project has been delayed by a year. She said sometimes it can be as long as 18 months to get transformer upgrades.
“Transformers have been a delay problem for as long as I’ve been working on EVs for Commerce at this point,” Clean Transportation Managing Director Steven Hershkowitz said. “It was getting better and then things got worse, I think, either from the data center build out or other international market considerations that are outside the control of anyone in this conversation.”
Puget Sound Energy Economic Development Manager Taylor Naten told the council that “as far as if manufacturing can keep up” with demand for transformer upgrades, “I don’t know that I can answer that one, unfortunately. But, the timeline of 12 to 18 months is probably pretty accurate.”
MacDonell observed said there is also difficulties coordinating with installers and utilities.
“Then sometimes…we’re dealing with different utilities,” she said. “An installer might have experience working with one utility and that utility might have a lot of experience with EV installations, but especially for some of our smaller rural utilities, this could be a whole new ballgame.”
Meanwhile, the council has lowered the forecast in its original Transportation Electrification Strategy model for the state’s EV population through 2035 after EV sales failed to meet the 2025 forecast. While there are more than 300,000 registered EVs as of July and that month’s EV market share, 17%, was the highest of the year, the state has had slower EV population growth in 2026 compared to 2025.