New charging stations, EV exhibits ... Philly gets juiced.

They were dancing the electric slide yesterday at Temple University.

That was to celebrate the unveiling of two new PhillyCarShare electric car charging stations at the corner of North Broad and Diamond streets. And two new Chevy Volts to plug into them.

This brings the number of PhillyCarShare charging stations to nine.

Temple is encouraging the university community to seek greener forms of transportation--including ride-sharing, public mass transit and biking -- Temple is attempting to reduce energy consumption by 25 percent in two years.

Meanwhile, other electrifying events are occurring as well.

ECOtality, Inc., a San Francisco-based electric transportation and energy storage company, is going to begin offering free charging stations in the greater Philadelphia area as part of its expansion of The EV Project, a data-gathering partnership with the Department of Energy.

Qualified residents in the Philadelphia region who have taken ownership of either the Nissan LEAF or Chevy Volt, will receive a free residential Blink wall mount charger as well as an installation credit of up to $400, subject to certain conditions. Residents and commercial hosts interested in participating can sign up at http://www.theevproject.com/sign-up.php or by emailing philadelphia@ecotality.com.

The project, funded with about $230 million in public and private funds, is designed to collect and analyze data about vehicle use in various geographies and climates, to analyze how well the charge infrastructure works and to conduct trials of various ways of charging for the service -- all to lead to a better system for the next generation of electric vehicles.

PECO is joining the initiative, adding its own incentives for electric vehicles, and PSE&G will join the program for its customers in Camden, Burlington, Gloucester and Mercer counties.

So far, The EV Project has logged more than 32 million miles and installed 7,000 charging stations in 18 markets nationwide. Click here to find out what the program has learned so far about Los Angeles electric vehicle drivers.

ECOtality is presenting a forum about the program Aug. 16 at the National Constitution Center. For details, check the Blink charger's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/blinknetwork.

And one more thing: Throughout the rest of August, the Philadelphia law firm Zarwin, Baum, DeVito, Kaplan, Schaer & Toddy, P.C.  plus U-GO Stations, Inc., a Pennsylvania company working with businesses and public municipalities to develop of an electric vehicle charging station infrastructure, are bringing to electric cars to the 1818 Market Street patio in Center City.

Norman Zarwin is a co-founding partner of the law firm and chairman of U-GO Stations.

For now, they're showing the the Nissan Leaf, a five-door hatchback electric car, and the Fisker Karma, a plug-in hybrid luxury sports sedan.

Look for more electric vehicles at the patio later this year.