New Hampshire Closes a $17 Million NEVI Round

New Hampshire Closes Its Next Round of Federal Charging Money

The New Hampshire Department of Transportation closed proposals on August 21 for Round II of its National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure RFP, the state's next tranche of federal formula funding for fast chargers along its alternative fuel corridors. New Hampshire's total NEVI allocation runs to roughly $17 million over five years, and winning vendors under this round will be responsible for installing new DC fast chargers plus five years of operation and maintenance after they're approved. NHDOT has not yet announced when awards will be decided.

It's a small state moving on the same federal clock as the big ones. New Hampshire's NEVI money is a fraction of what Michigan or Pennsylvania administer, but the mechanics are identical: a fixed formula allocation, a state DOT running its own RFP calendar, and a hard proposal deadline that doesn't wait for Washington to sort out what happens next with EV incentives.

What this means for property owners. If you operate or are considering a site along a New Hampshire corridor, this specific round has already closed, but NHDOT's EV charging infrastructure page is the place to watch for the next one. More broadly, NEVI formula money keeps arriving on its own schedule state by state even with the federal 30C charger tax credit gone since June 30. The federal dollars for corridor charging haven't stopped; they've just moved to a slower, state-run calendar.

Denver Public Schools Charges 28 Electric Buses Without a Bigger Utility Upgrade

Denver Public Schools switched on a new charging hub at its Hilltop bus terminal this week, built around 13 dual-port Kempower Satellite dispensers, for a total of 26 charging plugs sharing 650 kilowatts of capacity. Electrical contractor Winn-Marion led the installation, and PowerFlex manages the depot's smart charging and energy use. The hub supports a fleet that just grew from 3 to 28 electric school buses after DPS added 25 Blue Bird Vision units, making it the largest electric school bus fleet in Colorado and putting electric buses at 12% of the district's yellow bus fleet. The hub was ready ahead of the district's first day of school on August 24.

The power-sharing is the point. Kempower's distributed architecture lets the 650 kW pool of capacity move dynamically across whichever of the 26 plugs are actively charging a bus, rather than provisioning a fixed, much larger connection sized for every plug running at once simultaneously.

What this means for commercial property owners and fleet operators. Depot charging for a growing fleet is exactly the scenario where an oversized utility service upgrade can kill a project's budget. A distributed, dynamically shared system is a concrete example of how to add chargers, and buses, without requesting more capacity from the utility every time the fleet grows. If you're planning depot charging for a delivery fleet, a transit authority, or your own school district, this is the design pattern to ask your electrical contractor about before assuming a service upgrade is required.

A New Free App Maps 211,000 Chargers Across Eleven Networks

Octopus Energy's US arm launched Octopus Charge on August 20, a free map-based app covering more than 211,000 public chargers across eleven US and Canadian networks, including ChargePoint, EVgo, Blink, bp pulse, Shell Recharge, FLO, EV Connect, Circle K, Circuit Électrique, FPL EVolution, and AppleGreen Electric. Drivers can search by location or ZIP code and filter by charging speed, connector type, and network, with live availability, pricing, and an EV-specific route planner built in. Octopus says it passes through each network's own per-kWh price rather than adding a markup.

It's a bet that drivers don't want another walled garden. Most charging networks push their own branded app; Octopus Charge instead aggregates competitors' chargers into one map, similar to the Electroverse product Octopus already runs in the UK and Europe.

What this means for property owners. If you're a commercial site host, this is one more reason the specific network brand on your charger matters less than it used to. Drivers increasingly find and pay for a charging session through a third-party app rather than a network's own, so reliability, uptime, and price are what will keep them coming back, not which logo is on the cabinet.

Blink Launches AI Load Balancing to Squeeze More Chargers Out of Existing Power

Blink Charging launched EnergyConnect on August 18, an AI-driven energy management system that dynamically balances power across a site's chargers in real time through a centralized dashboard, with optional site-level load limits and scheduling. The initial rollout covers 13 Blink-owned DC fast-charging sites in Florida, with Blink planning a phased expansion to additional sites in the US, UK, and Belgium.

The pitch is capacity, not just efficiency. Blink says the system is designed to maximize how many chargers a site can run within its existing electrical service, which the company frames as a way to add stalls or expand a site without the cost and lead time of a utility infrastructure upgrade.

What this means for commercial property owners. A utility service upgrade, new transformer, or panel replacement is routinely the most expensive and slowest part of adding DC fast charging to a property. Software-managed load balancing won't eliminate that cost in every case, especially at sites already near their electrical limit, but it's a real lever to pull before assuming your only option is calling the utility for more capacity.

A New Utility Playbook Targets the "Renter's Penalty" in Public Charging

GRID Alternatives and the Smart Electric Power Alliance published a joint Utility Brief and Utility Playbook on August 18 aimed at utility program designers, addressing what the groups call the renter's penalty: charging at public or shared multifamily stations can cost two to six times more per kWh than charging at a single-family home, which erodes much of the fuel-cost savings that make EVs attractive in the first place. The Playbook walks utilities through specific program design steps for building affordable public and multifamily charging options aimed at low-income drivers.

Home charging has always been the cheapest option, by design. Most EV incentive coverage, including in this newsletter, is written for someone with a driveway or garage. This resource is aimed at the other side of that gap: the renters and multifamily residents who can't install their own charger and are stuck paying public-station prices for every charge.

What this means for residential and multifamily property owners. If you own or manage multifamily housing, this Playbook is a useful document to bring to your utility account representative when you're scoping a resident charging program, since it lays out concretely what utilities can do on the affordability side, not just the make-ready and equipment side utility programs usually cover.

By the Numbers

100: Walmart store locations with its 400 kW DC fast-charging network as of August 21, 2026, spread across 20 states, with Walmart on pace for roughly 200 locations by the end of 2026.

$17 million: New Hampshire's total five-year NEVI formula allocation; Round II proposals closed August 21, 2026.

650 kW: Total shared power capacity of Denver Public Schools' new Kempower charging hub, serving its newly expanded 28-bus electric fleet.

211,221: Chargers mapped in Octopus Energy's new Octopus Charge app, launched August 20, 2026, across eleven US and Canadian networks.

2 to 6 times: How much more it can cost to charge at a public or multifamily station than at a single-family home charger, per GRID Alternatives and SEPA's new Utility Playbook.

4,382: New DC fast-charging ports added across the US in the second quarter of 2026, per Paren, with non-Tesla NACS ports more than doubling year over year to 800.

Sources: New Hampshire Department of Transportation (NHDOT Releases NEVI Round II RFP, dot.nh.gov, accessed August 2026), Kempower (investor release, August 2026), electrive.com, FuelCellsWorks, and The EV Report (Denver Public Schools charging hub coverage, August 19-20, 2026), Octopus Energy US (Octopus Charge launch, August 20, 2026), Electrek, electrive.com, InsideEVs, and Charged EVs (Octopus Charge coverage), Blink Charging (EnergyConnect launch via GlobeNewswire, August 18, 2026), StreetInsider, StockTitan, and The EV Report (Blink coverage), GRID Alternatives and the Smart Electric Power Alliance (Utility Brief and Utility Playbook, August 2026), Charged EVs (Utility Playbook coverage, August 18, 2026), Electrek (Walmart 400 kW network reaches 100 stores, August 21, 2026), and Paren (US EV Fast Charging Q2 2026 report), evchargingstations.com (Paren Q2 2026 coverage). evcharginghelp.com is editorially independent and receives no compensation from any company mentioned.