Elliot Lake hopes to sign a 10-year contract with an Ontario government company that would lead to construction of an electric vehicle charging station in town.
The company is Ivy Charging Solutions, jointly owned by Hydro One and the Ontario Power Generation Corporation.
City Economic Development manager Steve Antunes told members of City Council that if the plan goes ahead, the estimated cost of the project would be about $25,000 in the first year.
He said Elliot Lake is not expected to sell enough battery charges to make any money in year one.
"As time goes on, we have full control of what we can charge...It is designed from other municipalities, other applications that are cost neutral," Antunes continued.
"To be very honest, it's going to depend on the volume that we have to do that, but as we've seen, the number of vehicles will likely allow us to get to that very quickly," he said.
The idea is that building the charging station will boost tourism and help local Elliot Lake business.
Antunes noted in his council report that EV ownership is increasing fast and Elon Musk's Tesla cars and trucks are not the only game in town anymore.
Canadian EV sales grew nearly 60 per cent in 2021 over the previous year, with 86,000 vehicles sold. Ontario represented nearly 23 per cent of those sales.
An expected federal mandate coming soon will require 20 per cent of all cars and trucks sold in the country to be electric and that will increase to 50 per cent, by 2035.
Elliot Lake is applying for a government grant from Natural Resources Canada to cover up to 75 per cent of the subsequent costs.
The high capacity single charging station is tentatively planned for installation at the Miners' Memorial Monument site.
Wherever it's built, the station will allow owners of electric vehicles to fast charge so they can quickly restore enough battery power to fuel up for the trip along Highway 17 between Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie.
Ivy Charging says completion time for the Elliot Lake charging station would be about 30 months.
Coun. Chris Patrie called it a work in progress.
"We're approving this in principle. I don't know if we're gonna be able to make it fly," Patrie said.
"In order to get grant money, we're gonna have to put it on municipal property. The concern that I have with the stated Miners' Monument site is that we don't currently (have electrical) service," he went on.
"We couldn't put (it at) our Welcome Centre because there's no hydro. So if we're gonna have to run hydro to that facility, it might cost us a fortune.
"Depending on cost is where we're going to make those decisions and based on further grant applications as to whether or not we're going to move forward with it," Patrie concluded.
Antunes explained that the location where the city decides to instal the charging station would require a three phase jump up (in electrical service) to be viable.
He said the idea of the Miners' Memorial site came up because it's central, easy to get in and out of, and would allow drivers to wander around or sit down, while charging their vehicle was underway.
Antunes explained the city has also reached out to private industry looking to see if there is any interest in building a charging station in.Elliot Lake by the private sector.
The Economic Development manager said the city acted to provide a charging station, because the private sector hasn't.
Conversely, Antunes said if anybody in the private sector decides to start building plug in stations, the city will back off.