Tag Archives: EV

EV

Betterplace, the first to fall.

Around May 2013 betterplace pulled out of Australian operations in an attempt to keep it’s parent company a float. This plan wasn’t overly great as the parent company still went bankrupt. http://www.smh.com.au/business/carbon-economy/how-better-place-got-lost-20130527-2n7gp.html this SMH article goes into a bit more depth, on why how and what’s to blame.

The real unfortunate thing is they put in quite a bit of infrastructure, with their own money and through government support through smart grid smarty city funding and now it’s being removed or unusable.

Below is pictures from at the Morisset Level 3 Charger, before and after removal.

November 2013
December 2013

The good news for the Level 3 fast chargers is that schneider electric have taken possession of these units back (they originally provided them) and at least they will be resold and not placed on the scrap heap.

It also appears it’s not just the level 3 but the level 2 after noticing a local shopping centre was adversing EV charging on there facebook page I emailed them to sadly only get this reply

Good morning Gabriel

Regarding your query about our Electric Car Charges, we did have charging areas however these have recently been removed from our Centre.

Kind regards

Michelle Thomas
Centre Manager
Commercial Property
Retail | Office | Industrial
Stockland Jesmond & Wallsend
28 Blue Gum Road, Jesmond NSW 2299
T +61 2 4955 9249 M +61 438 266 707
F +61 2 4955 8014 E michelle.thomas@stockland.com.au
www.stockland.com.au
BeGreen… and consider the environment before printing this email

So while I’m working madly to try and increase the amount of EV chargers in my area they are being removed at a faster rate that I can convince people to put them in.

EV

EV friendly accomondation

LEAF Meetup

On the 27 of October met up with some LEAF drivers from Australian LEAF Owners Forum at Sun Valley Tourist Park see the above picture for a line up of their Leafs. It was a good meet up most of them had not met before and basically the whole meet up was based around interest in the cars.  so naturally the talk of the next meet up came up and I suggested next years 2014 hunter EV festival it’s actually down for a weekend this day 1 at the race track day 2 the expo at the foreshore.

So in an attempt to help out I sent this email out to the accommodation around Newcastle

Hello
In the lead up the the 2014 hunter Electric Vehicle festival weekend I’m canvassing Newcastle accommodation for places that are Electric Vehicle friendly so i can provide a list to out of town EV drivers.

So the first question is would you like to be added to the list ?

If you are interested I would like to know how many power points you have within close proximity to a car park?  and what type they are ? (most will be 240 Volt 10 amp)

The last piece of information I need is if there is a surcharge to the accommodation cost for EV charging and how much will it be?

Thank you for your time

What I forgot the put in the email was the dates August 16th and 17th… and the approximate cost of power which I estimated at 15kwh (~6 hours of time) so at $0.25 per KWh $3.75.  So far only had one reply which was positive but you can keep and eye on my progress by checking the spreadsheet on google drive

 

 

EV

Charging Infrastructure

A lot of people ask where do you charge. The answer is nearly for all EV drivers is at home. Some times the next question is do you need special equipment to which the answer is a powerpoint. (more specifically a 15amp powerpoint for the provide cable with the LEAF or I-miev). When out and about we have the following options.

 Commercial Infrastructure

There are two providers of commercial charging infrastructure in Australia, both are American Chargepoint and Blink, there was a 3rd Better place but unfortunately that company went broke.  Blink is yet to setup an Australian office so they are a bit harder to contact.

Chargepoint have a office in every state of Australia and have around 167 charge stations in the country. The chargepoint model is a low risk for them, it requires the person or business that wants a charging station to pay for the capital costs of supply and install of the charger.  It’s then up to the charging station owner if they want to charge the EV driver and chargepoint through the use of their RFID tags issued to drivers then take care of the payment system and charger driver accordingly, at present all the ones in Australia are free to use.

Chargepoint Network
Blink Network

As you can see the blink network is much smaller, with only 5 sites and 7 chargers.  blink doesn’t let the site owner choose the price but instead charge $1USD per hour. I’m still waiting to hear from blink sales on if they have plans to expand in Australia.

Community Infrastructure

What if you don’t want to charge people or just provide a simple power point.  Well for these site there is a great site that EV drivers and Charging spot owners can used to share information.  http://www.recargo.com/search (you might have to pan to Australia) Allows you to sign up and add charge points to there map tell other EV drivers that a charging spot works by checking in (think foursquare and facebook), and upload pictures to help people find charge location.  This has probably been the most useful tool so far when it comes to charging infrastructure, I highly recommend all EV drivers install the app on the iphone or android.

Encouraging Infrastructure

Currently there still isn’t enough charging infrastructure, not because the current EV drivers need it but mainly because it puts people off buying a EV.

In a small effort to make it easier for business to understand what’s required to provide a service to EV drivers I prepared a primer

Electric Vehicle Charging Solutions for Businesses

Hopefully other EV drivers can use this when negotiating with companies about added a charging station to there site.