Could 10000+ power pole AC EV chargers speed up EV transition?

I’ve been driving electric cars for a few years without any options to charge them within walking distance of my home in the Inner West of Sydney. Until now.

Testing AGL AC EV pole chargers

Half a dozen new AC electric vehicle (EV) street chargers have been installed near my local shops. Soon there will be well over 100 across my council area as part of 671 charging ports at 391 locations across Sydney and Newcastle.

Charger owners operating these include: Chargepost, AGL, EVSE, EVX and several councils.

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Image by - Neerav Bhatt

Some of the parking places for these chargers are not dedicated so EV drivers are not guaranteed to get a charging bay.

Some people in the Australian EV and energy industry think in 10 years time there we need tens of thousands of AC street chargers like this across big Australian capital cities.

Their argument is it's better to have undedicated parking spots because it's a lot cheaper to install chargers like this on power poles without pole access fees, dedicated parking permit fees and parking bay enforcement fees paid up front and annually to poles & wires infrastructure owners and local councils.

AGL is one of the first operators of these new Sydney AC pole EV chargers and they’ve made them free until the end of January 2025 to try and get local EV drivers to try them out.

All you need to use them is an EV, type 2 to type 2 charging cable (I suggest 7m long) and you're good to go.

After January ends users will have to install yet another charging app for AGL charger access. EVSE AC chargers will need the Exploren app, EVX charger users will need the EVX app etc. Or EV drivers will be able to one off register an RFID card associated with each app and just tap to start/stop a charging session.

I tried out one of these new AGL AC chargers with my own MG4 77 . My car supports 11 KW AC charging and the unit supplied about 10kW.

There should have been an instruction sticker on the charger explaining how it works and another sticker saying it was part funded by the NSW government.

Unfortunately AGL chose poor quality stickers so they had already fallen off all but one of the chargers I found in my neighbourhood.

Interestingly the charger added 20% to my car battery in 98 minutes. Using a common home 7 KW single phase EV charger would take about 140 minutes instead.

So these public AC pole chargers are a bit faster than an average home charger if your EV supports 11kW or 22kW AC Charging.

Note that some EVs (like all BYD EVs sold in Australia) only support about 7kW AC charging.

Obviously a pole charger kWh price will cost more than charging at home.

You have to to decide whether it's worth it because the parking location is convenient or it's useful for you to AC public charge a while while you're going to a nearby shopping mall or cafe

My first attempt at using a new AGL AC street charger worked well but will it always work well? I don't know.

Many frustrated EV drivers in the area have messaged me to say they tried to use some of these new AGL undedicated parking spot chargers and found that they were blocked by petrol cars parking in those locations for most of the week.

We'll see what happens in the long run especially after AGL starts charging for the use of their AC pole chargers at the end of January 2025.

Why is the NSW Government subsidizing EV pole chargers?

The reason why the New South Wales government has subsidized a kerbside AC EV charger rollout is to encourage EV purchases by the 30% of NSW drivers who don't have their own garage or personal parking space off street to use for charging an EV at home.

Some people will say that these kerbside chargers aren't really fast at up to 22kW AC maximum charge rate and they're kind of expensive per kilowatt hour compared to DC fast charges.

These are a public option for people who can’t home charge but also enable EV drivers to top up their car battery while doing other things nearby like a work meeting, having a meal or meeting friends.

I visited the Bexley North Community Ausgrid battery and tried out the EV charger which is connected to the battery and uses stored energy from it.

It's currently free and we'll see what happens early in 2025 when Ausgrid switches the pricing on.

I think that they will actually let someone else run the charger and just supply power to it because Ausgrid is technically not supposed to be a retailer to customers, they're supposed to be a wholesaler.

Ausgrid wants eventually to have 10,000 or so AC pole chargers like this across Sydney.

This could be awesome for reducing the cost of installing each new AC charger if done in bulk efficiently.

As long as it doesn’t crush competition from independent EV charging networks like EVX, EVSE and others who are also setting up their own AC chargers across Sydney on power poles and in other places.

Do we want electricity poles & wires owner companies to also own Australian capital city AC charging networks?

I think so only if they are carefully regulated, the wholesale price per kWh supplied is low and any built-in cost rises/falls each year are set fairly to reflect actual operating cost and wholesale electricity prices.

It could perhaps be best perhaps for a wholesale NBN style (original fibre everywhere version 1.0) AC EV charger network to be set up owned by Ausgrid and other grid owners like Endeavour and Essential Energy.

With competing apps, subscription plans, customer service and deals operated by more customer service focused entities like EVX and EVSE.

I will publish an article in a few weeks with view points from a few Charge Point Operators in favour and against this idea.

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Image by - Neerav Bhatt