Quebec’s Electric Circuit Rolls into Ontario

The Ontario Government has accepted a proposal from Electric Circuit to set up a fast-charge corridor between Quebec and the Ottawa area.This project was submitted further to a request for proposals for public and private partners to set up a public charging infrastructure for electric vehicles (EVs) throughout Ontario.

The rollout of this corridor calls for the commissioning of 14 fast-charge stations along Highways 401, 416, 417 and 17 by 2017. An additional eight 240-V (Level-2) charging stations are also planned at strategic locations in Ottawa.

The Electric Circuit, a subsidiary of Hydro-Québec, submitted a joint bid with Metro, St-Hubert restaurants and the City of Ottawa, which will install charging stations on its property. The charging stations will be manufactured by the Electric Circuit’s supplier, Quebec-based AddÉnergie.

“This initiative reflects the ambitious objective set out in our Transportation Electrification Action Plan 2015-2020, which aims to have 100,000 electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles on our roads by 2020,” says Jacques Daoust, Quebec’s Minister of Transportation, Sustainable Mobility and Transportation Electrification. “The installation of charging stations along highways is another argument to convince future car buyers to make the switch to electric vehicles.”

The Electric Circuit is the largest public charging network in Quebec. It comprises 620 public charging stations, including 31 fast-charge stations, across 16 Quebec regions. Since its launch in March 2012, 136 private and institutional partners have joined the Electric Circuit, and the network now has over 7,000 members.