New South Wales electricity distributor Ausgrid wants to make electric car charging easier and cheaper for all with its kerbside EV chargers.
Sponsored by Ausgrid
The electric vehicle (EV) revolution is upon us – and there’s much to look forward to. Your future car will do away with a complicated combustion engine, replacing it with a simple electric motor.
It will be powered by a battery pack, itself charged, eventually entirely, by renewable energy sources like the sun and the wind.
RELATED: Considering an electric car? Check out our buyers’ guide
In an EV future, the air you breathe will be cleaner, your conscience will feel lighter, and your car will be smoother, quieter and nicer to drive than ever.
Not only that, but the future of the planet will be that much more secure – the overall goal of electrification being to combat manmade climate change, of course. No small thing.
Nothing worth doing was ever easy, however, and this tectonic shift is not without its challenges. As Australia embraces electrification, huge additional demand will be placed on the electricity grid. This might sound like cause for concern, but you needn’t worry at all.
Australia’s electricity grids are powering up for the shift to EVs. One of the electricity infrastructure suppliers leading the charge to full electrification is Ausgrid.
Today, Ausgrid has invited us to hit the streets of Sydney to see first-hand how it’s preparing the grid for EVs. And when you get such an invite, you accept, given Ausgrid is the largest distributor of electricity on Australia’s east coast, turning the lights on for more than four million people each day, including critical infrastructure such as hospitals and schools.
You might not think much about the grid when you plug in your new EV at home, but to get those electrons from their source and into your car’s battery is an incredible feat of engineering. Substations, powerlines, underground cables and power poles span more than 22,000 square kilometres throughout Sydney, the Central Coast and Hunter Valley – a vast, buzzing network of electricity infrastructure you probably take completely for granted.
Our first stop on our tour of Ausgrid’s future-proofing plans is in the Sydney seaside suburb of Cronulla. The sun is beaming down its seemingly limitless energy, and Nick from Ausgrid, our host for the day, wants to graphically demonstrate just how hard it can be to own an EV in some suburbs – for now, anyway.
“There are neighbourhoods like this all over Sydney, where charging an EV at home isn’t possible as the houses don’t have driveways, don’t have garages, or where there are apartment blocks,” Nick tells Drive.
“People who are renting may also be unable to install at-home charging. We know that access to charging is a key barrier to people purchasing an EV. We want to change that.
“We want owning an EV to be just as convenient and affordable for people who are unable to charge at home as it is for those who can.”
It’s quite a large problem, although Ausgrid seems unperturbed. To see a proposed solution, we dash across to Gymea Bay.
As we stroll down the street with Nick, we arrive at a power pole that looks no different from the probably millions of others on Sydney’s streets. But there’s something special about this one.
“This is a new pole EV charging station, providing 7kW to 22kW of AC charging, which will mean you can charge an electric car in about four hours,” explains Nick.
Ausgrid imagines this deceptively simple yet very clever power pole charging station solving the problem of where to charge your street-parked EV – in one fell swoop.
Ausgrid is working with the industry to explore different ways to scale up solutions like this and deliver more value for customers. This includes NSW Government grants that enable third parties to partner with Ausgrid to deliver solutions like this one. Ausgrid sees a need for there to be thousands of power pole-located kerbside EV chargers.
“We want EV chargers to be so widespread that we no longer need dedicated parking bays because there will be a public charger wherever you might want one.”
That would mean a full ‘tank’ of electrons every time you get in your EV… range anxiety begone.
We jump in the car with Nick and head to Bexley North in southern Sydney, about half an hour away. We arrive to see a cluster of what looks like industrial-sized fridges wrapped in indigenous artwork. These high-tech-looking monoliths are some of the first Community Batteries installed by Ausgrid.
At 267kWh, this battery installation can pack the same power as eight standard-sized electric cars. “This changes the game for consumers and the grid – it’s a real win-win-win,” explains Nick.
“It allows people with solar to store power in the day and draw it back in the evening. People who can’t get solar on their roofs, because they rent or live in apartments, benefit by sharing the excess solar energy within their community. And it keeps costs down for all the customers on our network … putting downward pressure on energy bills.”
Ausgrid anticipates rolling out hundreds of these community batteries, which will increase in size/battery capacity over time. While we are already seeing people charge back into the grid with home chargers, these batteries will also eventually support EVs feeding electricity back into the grid itself, a technology offered by many new EV models called Vehicle-to-Grid – or V2G. Nick says watch this space.
“EVs can be really helpful in managing the grid,” he says. “As we get more solar on the system, EVs are a perfect fit because users can control when they charge, use power when it’s cheap, and will soon be able to send power back to the grid.”
Nick has one final surprise for us. While to us it just looks like a regular Ausgrid truck, this vehicle represents much more.
“This is how strongly Ausgrid believes in the process of electrification,” says Nick. “We are electrifying our fleet of vehicles. We are targeting to have 900 electric vehicles in our fleet by 2029 and already have over 100 on the road.”
Rather than shying away from the monumental task of preparing the grid for electrification, Ausgrid is championing it. As an EV advocate, Ausgrid is adding its voice and guidance to the national discussion by being a member of the Electric Vehicle Council, the national body representing the EV industry in Australia.
For Australians, the transition to EVs can seem scary, and indeed change can be daunting. But as the price of EVs themselves comes down, and the electricity grid muscles up, there’s nothing daunting about cleaner air, quieter and smoother driving – and a planet with a future. Vive la EV revolution.
The post ‘Convenient and affordable’: Ausgrid to roll out kerbside EV chargers on power poles appeared first on Drive.
