Agency of Agriculture outlines new testing program for public EV chargers; committee urged to close statutory gaps

Steve Collier, general counsel for the Agency of Agriculture, and Scott Dolan, the agency’s weights‑and‑measures specialist, told the House Transportation Committee on May 22 that the agency has begun licensing and testing public electric vehicle charging stations and is building a regulatory program for accuracy and consumer protection.

“We do want consumers, when they go to an electric vehicle supply equipment and charge their car, we do want them to get what they pay for just the same way that they do when they go to the gas pump,” Collier said.

Collier described a recent build‑out of the agency’s testing capability. The agency purchased level‑2 testing equipment in 2024 (Collier said the equipment cost about $110,000), licensed operators who install chargers, and has tested devices at dozens of locations. Dolan told the committee the agency tested about 237 meters across roughly 46 distinct addresses (the agency treated some clustered charging sites as single locations) and found roughly 8% of meters outside the ±2% tolerance set in the national Handbook 44 standards.

“We did 237 meters, and we did 46 unique locations,” Dolan said. “In our testing, we found 8% of the devices were outside of the…