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Doug Bechtel
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One of the things I really enjoy about being the manager of your cooperative is the opportunity I have to talk to our members about things of interest. Over the holiday season several of you asked me for an update on our electric vehicle program. I realize that I have been remiss and will take this opportunity to share some of our successes and not quite successes over the past several months.
First and foremost, is a growing interest in electric vehicles among our members. We now have a San Juan County Electric Vehicle Association that meets regularly by way of the Interac-tive Video Network. Alex Taylor is Chairman of this group. If you would like additional information, call him or Bill Culliton here at OPALCO. I might mention that the electric vehicle groups on both Orcas and San Juan Islands are looking forward to buil-ding an electric vehicle for someone. If you have thought about having an electric vehicle and would like someone to build it for you, here is your chance to get one inexpensively. If you have a suitable vehicle to convert, the materials will cost about $5,000. Contact the Association if you would like to par-ticipate or have them build you an E.V.
We have recently installed our first electric vehicle charging station in front of Doty's Homegrown Market in Eastsound. We are currently installing one at Key Bank on San Juan Island. Others participating in the program are Roche Harbor Resort and Island Market in Eastsound. We plan on including recharging stations in the San Juan Islands Sustainable Technology Center. Now, if you have an electric vehicle and drive it into town you are going to find a convenient place to recharge before you drive home, not to mention some prime parking locations that these businesses have reserved for electric vehicles.
We ap-preciate the support San Juan County has given our E.V. efforts. We hope that the County may begin using E.V.'s in 1995.
On the down side, we have gone through another set of batteries in our Solectria. These batteries were initially attractive to us because they were Sears Diehards and are readily available. Before we knock Sears too badly, I have to mention that they stand behind their warranties and have been very good to deal with when we have had battery problems. What we have found, however, is that batteries are like apples, one bad one will spoil all of them. As the battery bank approaches the end of its life all of a sudden the driving range of the vehicle would be significantly reduced. We would test the batteries and find that two or three were bad. We would replace these bat-teries and in another week or two there would be a couple more batteries that failed. The car currently has 5,500 miles on it and it is at the end of its second set of batteries. We haven't replaced the batteries yet. We are looking around for a different class of battery that will, hopefully, have a longer life under the rugged use imposed by an electric vehicle.
I am still convinced that electric vehicles have a role in San Juan County. It seems like more and more people are agreeing with me!!
Doug Bechtel
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