I own an Ioniq 6 electric vehicle since about a year ago. There was a soccer association meeting I wanted to attend in Lima, Ohio, and I thought I’d combine it with a stop in my old home of Sidney, Ohio. Sidney has no chargers. There is one location in all of Shelby County, Ohio located about 20 miles from Sidney at the Airstream Inc. Customer Center in Jackson Center (my home town). There were a handful of Level 2 chargers in Lima located quite inconveniently.
Let’s say that I’m sensitive to the availability of chargers off the beaten path.
A PR pitch about a company with a solution to adding electric power not only for EVs, but also temporary power for concerts or power outages caught my attention. So I interviewed CEO Tom McCalmont of Paired Power to get some details.
Let’s set a couple of other problems Paired Power solved.
You have probably driven past a “farm” of solar canopies. Constructing those is nontrivial. There is a concrete foundation, supporting structures, and mounting the solar panels. Workers must continually go up, mount a panel, come down, get a panel, move the ladder, and go up again.
Also, many companies and businesses would like to have a smaller installation maybe for just a couple of EVs in the parking lot. Or, maybe a city like Sidney, Ohio (Hi, Mayor Barhorst) could pop up a couple of stations to help attract people with EVs visiting the city for dining or shopping.
The leaders at Paired Power asked, what if we could change the design so that the supporting structure is also the lifting mechanism? What if we could design a station with a solar canopy and a battery maybe also hooked up to the grid for supplemental charging?
And, they did. They call it a microgrid. The product is Pair Tree. You must visit the website and see how two workers can set up a station in less than a day. It’s way cool.
From the press release that caught my attention:
PairTree’s technology stores green power from the sun and combines it with off-peak power from the traditional utility grid to deliver resilient, reliable, and sufficient energy for charging vehicles. With its colorful pop-up canopy design, PairTree is an American-made EV charger that delivers user-friendly and reliable green electricity.
PairTree is already being used by hundreds of everyday consumers, businesses, farmers, and government organizations for daily EV charging. PairTree even has an emergency backup plug for use during power outages.
