The City and Southern California Edison (SCE) are installing 24 over night Level 2 (240-volt) electric vehicle (EV) charging stations in Beach Parking Lot 5 S. The ChargePoint chargers were installed under SCE’s Charge Ready Program, which provides funding for EV charging infrastructure to support EV adoption. To help recover operating costs, a user fee of $0.30 per kilowatt-hour is applied to charging sessions.
To provide power to the EV charging stations an electrical power distribution panel and a transformer were placed on the parkway near Barnard Way.
In response to neighbor complaints about the visual loss, the City (Santa Monica Cultural Affairs and the Office of Sustainability and Environment) worked with artist RFX1 to paint the utility boxes with theme of A Green Future. RFX1 named the project “In Flux and Harmony” The smaller box (transformer) represents the super computer that powers the spaceship with a green liquid that flows throughout. It can even travel through time with its funky green flux capacitor.