Electric Vehicle Charging on PEI

Transport Canada has a helpful page of resources on electric vehicles that includes a link to a map of charging stations.

The map includes a link to a developer API at the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory; by signing up for a free API key you can get the information from the map as JSON or XML.

With the API key, this request will return all the charging stations on Prince Edward Island:

https://developer.nrel.gov/api/alt-fuel-stations/v1.json?fuel_type=ELEC&state=PE&country=CA&format=JSON&api_key=[API KEY GOES HERE]

The API returns JSON. If I want to convert that to GeoJSON, I can use JavaScript:

var getJSON = require('get-json')
var GeoJSON = require('geojson');
getJSON('https://developer.nrel.gov/api/alt-fuel-stations/v1.json?fuel_type=ELEC&state=PE&country=CA&format=JSON&api_key=[API KEY GOES HERE]', function(error, response){
	var stations = GeoJSON.parse(response.fuel_stations, { Point: ['latitude', 'longitude'] });
	console.log(JSON.stringify(stations));
});

The API returns 25 charging stations from Prince Edward Island (as of May 13, 2019); normalizing the data, there are 21 unique locations.

Visualizing them on a map, it becomes clear that they are concentrated in Summerside and Charlottetown, with none west of Cape Egmont nor east of Montague (it seems like an unrealized public relations and tourism opportunity to not have partially wind-powered EV station at North Cape and Hermanville).

By Geography

• Charlottetown Area (6)
  • Capital Honda
  • Clarke Nissan
  • Delta Prince Edward Hotel
  • Inn On The Harbour
  • Charlottetown Mitsubishi
  • Town of Stratford
• Summerside (9)
  • Causeway Bay Hotel
  • Credit Union Place
  • Holland College
  • Kool Breeze Farms Garden Centre
  • Slemon Park Hotel
  • Summerside City Hall
  • Summerside Electric Light Plant
  • The Quality Inn
  • Township Chevrolet Buick GMC
• Other (6)
  • The Bottle Houses (Cape Egmont)
  • Island Stone Pub (Kensington)
  • Rossignol Winery (Little Sands)
  • Lanes Riverhouse Inn and Cottages (Montague)
  • Prince Edward Island Preserve Co. (New Glasgow)
  • Around The Sea Rotating Suites & Tours (North Rustico)

By Host

• Municipal (4)
  • Town of Stratford
  • Credit Union Place
  • Summerside City Hall
  • Summerside Electric Light Plant
• Car Dealership (4)
  • Capital Honda
  • Clarke Nissan
  • Charlottetown Mitsubishi
  • Township Chevrolet Buick GMC
• Lodging (7)
  • Delta Prince Edward Hotel
  • Inn On The Harbour
  • Causeway Bay Hotel
  • Slemon Park Hotel
  • The Quality Inn
  • Lanes Riverhouse Inn and Cottages
  • Around The Sea Rotating Suites & Tours
• Other (6)
  • Holland College
  • Kool Breeze Farms
  • The Bottle Houses
  • Island Stone Pub
  • Rossignol Winery
  • Prince Edward Island Preserve Co.

I’m posting this both to get a May 2019 baseline that we can compare to as EV charging becomes more widespread, and with hope that others will use the open data that Transport Canada is helpfully providing.