The air cuts like thin glass down the Yampa corridor. A metal stanchion stands on the city easement at Tenth Street. It waits. This charging apparatus. Two years it had been coming. A necessary device. It requires a great hunger of power and it feeds the hungry engines that run silent on the road. Shoppers move nearby.
Diners pass. They walk among the businesses drawn by the promise of commerce and the sheer cold fact of reliable infrastructure. It is here now. A fact made manifest for the traveler and the local alike, a gift opened late in the cold season.
The cost was enormous. Three hundred thousand dollars put down on the ground.
Not all of it straight cash. Government money flows. A grant from the state office, Colorado Energy, one hundred thousand dedicated to the necessary infrastructure. A necessary upgrade to the transformer itself. Fifty thousand of that sum was Yampa Valley Electric Association work, heavy duty applied to the wires.
Daniel Benhammou of Helios Charging knew this road. His family drives only electric machines. He sought this connection. A bewildering convergence of state funding and private enterprise to deliver mere electricity to a lonely street corner. After the waiting.
A blessing for the road-weary man. The fast charger is the requirement of the tourist, the transient visitor.
Level Two machines serve the sleeper, the hotel guest who seeks only rest. But here is speed. To draw the current deep and quick. This Level Three machine works for all manner of silent automobile save for those requiring the adapter, the simple necessary metal piece. Benhammou spoke of this necessity for exploration.
To roam the high peaks and the river valleys of the state. To know that the power waits. It pulls people into town now. Into the shops and the hungry restaurants. A quiet engine for commerce. People charge. They walk. They spend. They drive clean. It is good work.
The desolate landscape stretches out, a barren expanse of asphalt and steel, punctuated only by the occasional skeletal frame of a charging station. These outposts, beacons of a nascent era, stand sentinel, awaiting the arrival of electric chariots, their batteries depleted, their drivers seeking sustenance for their parched machines.
The charging station, a utilitarian construct of concrete and metal, rises like a monolith, its presence a testament to the inexorable march of progress.
As one approaches the station, a tangle of cables and wires snakes across the ground, like a metallic serpent, pulsing with the ---blood of the modern age. The air is heavy with the scent of ozone and burning rubber, a noxious bouquet that clings to the skin like a bad omen.
The charging station's façade, a drab and unassuming visage, belies the complex machinery that hums and whirs within, a symphony of electrons and circuitry that orchestrates the transfer of energy from the grid to the waiting vehicle.
The process of replenishing one's stores is a straightforward one, a matter of plugging in and waiting, as the station's machinery works its magic, transfusing the vehicle's batteries with a vital dose of electricity.
Alternative viewpoints and findings: Visit websiteShoppers, diners and visitors to the downtown Steamboat Springs area — whether driving their own electric vehicle, a rental EV or a plug-in hybrid —...• • • •
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