Lindsey O'Brien//February 15, 2012//

Three more electric-vehicle charging stations are now online in a downtown Portland parking garage.
recently installed the chargers in Standard Plaza’s聽parking garage, at 1100 S.W. Sixth Ave. , a Portland-based insurance provider, is among many Oregon companies participating in , a $230 million, public-private partnership sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and managed by
The goal of The EV Project is to deploy 14,000 chargers in 18 cities, including Portland, Eugene, Salem and Corvallis.
The Standard parking garage, operated by Parking Management Co., has 265 parking stalls and now hosts three Blink level 2 charging stations available to the public as well as employees at the insurance company.
鈥淭he market for electric vehicles is at the very beginning stages, so I’m monitoring the network to see how quickly these become picked up,鈥 said Carrie Hearne, sustainability manager at The Standard. 鈥淏ut part of (The EV Project) is building on the concept that if you build it, they will come. We’re expecting more demand in the future and we want to be prepared for that.鈥
Hearne was unable to disclose the budget, but noted that The Standard paid for only 11 percent of project costs.