Are you ready for an electric vehicle? This OKC neighborhood is ready for hundreds of them

An EV charging station in every new home? Not quite, but every new home, around 800 in all, will be ready to charge electric vehicles in northwest Oklahoma City’s already eco-friendly Village Verde neighborhood, after grid infrastructure upgrades in the newest section and those that follow.

Oklahoma Gas and Electric Co. teamed with developers of 480-acre Village Verde, west of Mustang Road and north of Northwest Expressway, to make sure all new homes in the subdivision are EV ready. The Oklahoma City addition has Yukon postal addresses and is in the Piedmont school district.

“It’s one thing to have a few people around the neighborhood decide they want to install 240-volt EV chargers in their garage,” said Village Verde general manager Kelly Parker. “But when we’re talking about 62 homes now and 700-800 more in the future sections, I knew we needed to reach out to OG&E to ensure we had the infrastructure in place to support the additional, future power needs.”

Upgrading its part of the electrical grid puts Village Verde in the forefront of the trend. EV Connect, an online provider of electric vehicle information, said including EV charging in construction is not as common as it should be considering customer demand for electric vehicles.

“The switch to electric will not only ramp up, it is already here. Building without considering EV charging will be an outdated process,” EV Connect said.

Electric vehicles and EV chargers are ‘convenient, cost-effective and eco-friendly,’ Village Verde developer says

Village Verde now has 215 homes. OKC building company Homes By Taber bought the latest phase and will build homes on those 62 lots. It’s a fit for Homes By Taber, which includes numerous energy-efficient features in all of its homes.

“We plan to start building in there after we fill the current home sites with a few more families in our other Piedmont communities, Nichols Creek and Tuscany Lakes,” said Lindsay Haltom, director of sales and marketing.

OG&E worked with Village Verde to ensure homeowners have access to a dedicated 240V power supply. 

“EVs and EV chargers are convenient, cost-effective and eco-friendly. By ensuring our customers’ homes are EV ready, we’re empowering them to minimize their environmental footprint and move toward a greener, cleaner future,” said Parker, who is also CEO of Guaranteed Watt Saver, a construction energy-efficiency consultancy.

Making new homes in OKC’s Village Verde addition EV-ready is a fit for OG&E

It was a natural partnership for OG&E, said Aaron Cooper, manager of the utility’s corporate communications.

“At OG&E, we want to help our customers save money while encouraging renewables and responsible use of the energy grid. This project with Village Verde checks all those boxes,” Cooper said. “This is the first time we have worked with a developer in Oklahoma City to ensure the new residents will have EV-ready homes.

“It’s exciting to help our customers find solutions that help meet their energy and environmental goals. We appreciate the opportunity to work with Village Verde on this innovative and unique development.”

It’s just the latest innovation for energy-efficiency at Village Verde, which was meant to be as green as can be from the start of planning for it in 2006.

It is a long-term development project. Village Verde leases the property from the state Commissioners of the Land Office, which supports public education, and purchases a section as each one is completed, Parker said.

Oklahoma City Village Verde neighborhood was green from the start

Homes in Village Verde must be built to a HERS Index score of 70 or less. HERS stands for Home Energy Rating System; a score of 100 is the “standard new home,” and the lower the score, the more energy-efficient.

• Home builders can attain low HERS scores in different ways: better windows, better heating and air, better efficiency in lighting and appliances, for example.
• Homes in the neighborhood are oriented to have south-facing roofs for maximum production of solar energy.
• The streets and layout of the addition are designed with ponds, one for every 5 acres, to capture rainwater and keep it out of natural waterways, Parker said when the development was well under way in 2016.

“We did not dig up the ground and put large pipes in to run the rainwater to a stream and ultimately to a river. We wanted to capture that rainwater and make it a pond and an amenity,” Parker said then.

OG&E said its work in Village Verde is part of its “commitment to serving as a resource for EV customers,” and pointed to its online EV calculator for people considering buying an electrical vehicle to determine potential fuel savings “and make informed decisions on EV investments.”

OG&E also offers rebates and other EV incentives for drivers, builders and home buyers.

“We couldn’t have made this happen without OG&E,” Parker said. “The electric company has stepped up to make our community a greener place to live, and we’re grateful to partner with such an impactful organization to set new standards in the sustainable housing industry.”

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Senior Business Writer Richard Mize has covered housing, construction, commercial real estate and related topics for the newspaper and Oklahoman.com since 1999. Contact him at rmize@oklahoman.com. Sign up for his weekly newsletter, Real Estate with Richard Mize. You can support Richard’s work, and that of his colleagues, by purchasing a digital subscription to The Oklahoman. Right now, you can get 6 months of subscriber-only access for $1.