Today's Law As Amended


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AB-2703 Electric vehicle charging stations: reliability standards: low-income and disadvantaged community financial assistance.(2021-2022)



As Amends the Law Today


SECTION 1.

 Section 43872 is added to the Health and Safety Code, to read:

43872.
 (a) Upon appropriation by the Legislature, the state board, in consultation with the California Integrated Travel Project, shall develop a program to provide financial assistance to residents of low-income or disadvantaged communities, or both, to use electric vehicle charging stations.
(b) The program shall make financial assistance available through an open-loop, reloadable payment card that has both EMV chip and contactless capabilities and that is readily accessible to all residents of low-income or disadvantaged communities, or both, in the state.
(c) The program shall not limit the choice of the person receiving the financial assistance with regard to the provider of the electric vehicle charging station.
(d) The eligibility criteria for the program shall be the same as the Clean Cars 4 All Program established pursuant to Section 44124.5.
(e) The state board shall establish the amount of financial assistance that is available to each individual eligible to receive assistance under the program.
(f) The state board shall develop and establish the program within 12 months of receiving an appropriation.
(g) The state board shall prepare on an annual basis a statewide assessment of the number of payment cards that have been issued under the program.
(h) The state board shall regularly seek data and input relating to payment methods from stakeholders including, but not limited to, the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission, the Department of Transportation, the Public Utilities Commission, charging infrastructure company providers, local publicly owned utilities, state and local transit agencies, transit and equity advocacy groups, environmental groups, and financial technology companies.
(i) The state board may contract for professional services in implementing and administering this program.
(j) For purposes of this section, the following definitions apply:
(1) “California Integrated Travel Project” means the California Integrated Travel Project established within the Department of Transportation.
(2) “Charging station” means an electrical component assembly or cluster of component assemblies designed specifically to charge batteries within electric vehicles by permitting the transfer of electrical energy to a battery or other storage device in an electric vehicle.
(3) “Disadvantaged community” means a community identified pursuant to Section 39711.
(4) “Low-income community” has the same meaning as defined in Section 39713.
(5) “Open-loop” means redeemable upon presentation at multiple, unaffiliated merchants for goods or services.

SEC. 2.

 Section 25234 is added to the Public Resources Code, to read:

25234.
 (a) As a condition of receiving state funding to deploy a publicly available electric vehicle charging station, the recipient of the state funding shall agree to operate the station in compliance with the reliability and reporting standards developed by the commission pursuant to subdivision (b).
(b) For purposes of subdivision (a), the commission shall develop reliability and reporting standards for the operation of publicly available electric vehicle charging stations, including both of the following:
(1) Uptime requirements.
(2) Operation and maintenance plan requirements.
(c) The commission may develop different standards based on technology type, including, but not limited to, direct current fast charging stations, Level 2 charging stations, charging stations in remote parts of the state, and off-grid charging stations.
(d) The commission and the Public Utilities Commission shall develop excluded time criteria from which the recipient of the state funding is exempt from reliability standards compliance. Excluded time criteria may include, but are not limited to, all of the following:
(1) Upstream infrastructure failures such as electrical grid, cellular, and internet provider outages.
(2) Electric vehicle charging station damage as a result of an accident, vandalism, or improper use.
(3) Electric vehicle charging session failures due to vehicle inoperability problems.
(4) Preventative maintenance.
(5) Unforeseeable circumstances that would have been impossible to plan for using commercially reasonable methods.
(e) The commission may develop requirements and incentives for increasing compliance with the reliability standards.
(f) The commission shall publish data on compliance with the reliability standards as part of the assessment prepared pursuant to Section 25229. The commission shall protect the confidential information of an entity subject to this section, including, but not limited to, by anonymizing and aggregating the compliance data to ensure an individual entity’s data is not identifiable in the commission’s assessments prepared pursuant to Section 25229.
(g) The requirement established pursuant to subdivision (a) shall apply to all state agency funding that is provided to deploy a publicly available electric vehicle charging station installed on or after July 1, 2023.
(h) For purposes of this section, the following definitions apply:
(1) “Charging station” means an electrical component assembly or cluster of component assemblies designed specifically to charge batteries within electric vehicles by permitting the transfer of electrical energy to a battery or other storage device in an electric vehicle.
(2) “Excluded time” means the time not included when calculating uptime, as determined pursuant to the determination made by the commission and the Public Utilities Commission pursuant to subdivision (d).
(3) “Uptime” means the time a charging station’s hardware and software are both operational and the charging station dispenses electricity. “Uptime” does not include excluded time.
SEC. 3.
 The Legislature finds and declares that Section 2 of this act, which adds Section 25234 to the Public Resources Code, imposes a limitation on the public’s right of access to the meetings of public bodies or the writings of public officials and agencies within the meaning of Section 3 of Article I of the California Constitution. Pursuant to that constitutional provision, the Legislature makes the following findings to demonstrate the interest protected by this limitation and the need for protecting that interest:
In order to protect the confidential and proprietary information of an entity subject to Section 2 of this act, it is necessary that this act limit the public’s right of access to that information.