Exclusive test: Australian First EV Charger Connected to Community Battery

A few days ago NSW electricity distributor Ausgrid installed Australia’s first EV charger connected to a community battery, on a quiet street next to a park in the Bayside Council area of Sydney. I'm the first journalist to test it so read on to find out more.

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Image by - Neerav Bhatt

Ausgrid advise that the aim of connecting an EV charger to their battery is so local residents and visitors can charge their EVs utilising the excess feed in solar power sent to the grid by local homes in the area.

This Bexley North 267kWh capacity community battery is Ausgrid’s 8th within its network and the EV charger co-located with the battery is offering free charging until the end of July 2024.

The Ausgrid spokesperson said that they would answer my technical questions next month about pricing/kWh, what app the charger would be available on, will RFID cards work on it etc.

However because I visited the co-located community battery and EV charger just now to test it out with my own MG4 77 EV, I can tell you that:

• this charger location is BYO cable and has a Type 2 socket
• the parking space is not EV only so when you arrive it could already be ICEd by a fossil fuel car blocking access
• the touchscreen initially displays an Ausgrid logo but you can swipe to see: charge rate in kWh (mine said 10.18kW), number of kWh already charged, charging time elapsed. Once the free trial is over I assume the total cost of charging so far in your session will also be displayed.
• the charger hardware is a sleek looking unit that looks like an Inch Pro model made by Slovenian company Etrel, a subsidiary of Swiss company Landis+Gyr
• Inch Pro is a Type 2 AC charger capable of AC 22kW 3 phase charging, so far all the Plugshare checkins have been 11kW AC capable EVs
• Inch Pro can recognise users via: PIN code, SMS, RFID card or App, depending on which of these is set up. At present in free trial mode you just need to plug in a Type 2 cable connected to your EV. I started and stopped the charge using my MG iSmart app.

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The Bexley North Ausgrid community battery aims to support local power reliability, enable more homes to enjoy the benefits of solar panels and put downward pressure on energy bills by feeding back into the grid at peak times.

Ausgrid tried to co-locate an EV charger at their recently opened North Epping community battery but were not able to at that location due to community opposition. They are looking for an alternative location in North Epping.

Ausgrid CEO Marc England commented that batteries like this act as a sponge during the day absorbing solar generation and then feed that back to the network during peak times.

The Australian Government provided $200 million for the Community Batteries for Household Solar Budget Measure to deploy 400 community batteries across Australia. Of this, $171 million was allocated to ARENA to deliver at least 342 batteries.

Under the Community Batteries Funding Round 1 program, conditional on executing a funding agreement with ARENA, Ausgrid is aiming to deploy a portfolio of batteries up to 5MW.

The Bexley North community battery has been wrapped in custom artwork created by local First Nations artist Amanda Longbottom, titled On Country.

This artwork has been described by the artist as a representation of Indigenous people’s continuing connection to the saltwater that surrounds us and how First Nations people continue to care for country, on country.