More than a year after it launched, Fairfax County’s program to help neighborhoods introduce communal electric vehicle charging stations has resulted in its first installations.
County officials joined residents of the Harpers Square cluster in Reston on Dec. 18 for a ribbon-cutting to celebrate the addition of two EV chargers, making it the first community to successfully get through the Charge Up Fairfax program.
The Penderbrook Community Association near Fair Oaks has since followed suit, acccording to the Fairfax County Office of Environmental and Energy Coordination (OEEC).
“[Charge Up Fairfax] was instrumental in helping us determine how much we would need to spend on this program,” Harpers Square Cluster Association President Stan Beyderman said at the ribbon-cutting in a video shared by Hunter Mill District Supervisor Walter Alcorn. “Residents are very eager to start using the chargers as part of our effort to decarbonize our cluster and reduce our carbon footprint.”
Harpers Square Cluster is the first community to install #EV chargers with the help of the county’s Charge Up Fairfax program.🔌🚗
Their community decided to make this move to help reduce carbon emissions, and your HOA can do the same by applying to Charge Up.💚 pic.twitter.com/2PYIR0BNyi
— Supervisor Walter Alcorn (@WalterAlcornFFX) December 21, 2024
Harpers Square and Penderbrook were among the five communities chosen in March 2023 for a pilot of Charge Up Fairfax, which offers technical and financial assistance to residential associations looking to add EV charging stations in their common areas.
Nantucket at Reston and Reston’s Inlet Cluster Association were also included in the pilot, along with the Hidden Creek Homeowners Association near Burke.
Under the program, the county covers the cost of engineering site visits and feasibility assessments, while the participating association is responsible for hiring a contractor to install the EV chargers, obtaining permits and ensuring the necessary power infrastructure is available. All groups can get up to one-third, or $5,000, of their project’s costs reimbursed, with some communities getting up to $12,000.
The OEEC announced on Dec. 20 that four more communities have joined Charge Up Fairfax, bringing the program up to 20 participants.
- Lakepointe Community Council Homeowners Association in Burke
- Windsor Park Homeowners Association in the Franconia area
- Midtown North Condominium Unit Owners Association in Reston
- Encore of McLean Condominium Unit Owners Association in Tysons
The Midtown and Encore condos will only get financial assistance, since they both already did some preparatory work. The Lakepointe and Windsor Park homeowners will both get technical help in addition to being eligible for reimbursement.
“We are thrilled to welcome these four communities into the Charge Up Fairfax program,” OEEC Director John Morrill said in a press release. “By expanding the network of EV charging infrastructure close to home, we are fostering a greener future and making it easier for residents to embrace electric vehicles, which produce no tailpipe emissions and are better for the environment.”
Aiming for at least 15% of registered light vehicles to be electric or hybrid by 2030 as part of its goal to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, the county moved this summer to get technical assistance of its own. The Board of Supervisors directed staff to apply for the federal government’s “Charging Smart” program in the hopes of boosting its EV charging infrastructure.
Charge Up Fairfax’s next application period will come in spring 2025, the OEEC said.
Half of the participants so far have been in Reston, where many neighborhoods have shared parking instead of individual driveways or garages, Alcorn noted in a Dec. 18 newsletter. That includes Harpers Square, a 50-unit townhouse community near South Lakes Village Center.
In a video produced by the county, Beyderman described Harpers Square’s experience with the Charge Up Fairfax pilot program as “overwhelmingly positive.”
“We had excellent support from the county,” he said. “A couple things that really helped us out, the first was the feasibility [assessment], and the second thing … was it put us in touch with other communities that were going through this so we could all work together and try to come up with solutions to the same problems we were facing.”
