Essay by Eric Worrall

Can anyone on team green do simple math?

Power grid foils Ampol’s big EV charger plans

Ben Potter and Simon Evans
Updated Aug 19, 2024 – 7.09pm, first published at 1.33pm

Ampol, one of the country’s largest petrol retailers, has dialled back plans to triple the number of electric vehicle chargers because of power grid limitations in a blow to government hopes of pushing motorists towards cleaner cars in big numbers by 2030.

The company’s chief executive, Matt Halliday, said it would not be possible to expand the number of charging bays from 92 to 300 by the end of this year because of difficulties connecting chargers to the grid which is already struggling to cope with an influx of renewable energy generation.

…

“[As] much as we spend a lot of time talking about generation, firming and transmission infrastructure, the last mile distribution grid is not really built for large-scale electrification, despite the best will that the players have to try and make it happen,” Mr Halliday added. “There are a lot of constraints that need to be worked through.”

…

A dearth of EV chargers will in particular affect long-haul motorists. Chargers range from 75 kilowatts for a small charging bay to 300 kilowatts for fast chargers, and operators typically install three to five at a site, imposing substantial new loads that local low-voltage networks have not previously had to bear, said Ross De Rango, head of energy and infrastructure at the Electric Vehicle Council.

…

Read more: https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/ampol-dials-back-ev-charging-target-slashes-dividend-20240812-p5k1q4

I drove a 4WD through outback Australia last December, from the East cost of subtropical Queensland to Adelaide on the Southern coast of Australia. Most of the towns in outback Australia are really friendly, but there are some unpleasant exceptions.

One particularly remote town in Western New South Wales I met an EV charger repairman who told me he is making a fortune repairing the EV station every few days, the local gangs keep wrecking the charging station. He was only a few feet away from his van, but he kept the back locked the whole time he was working, except to get tools. During the 5 minutes we stopped there for a comfort break, two teenage gang bangers did a walk by of my vehicle. The pub across the street was boarded up, the windows had obviously been repeatedly smashed until the owner obviously got fed up with replacing them. I had no idea if the pub was open, and felt no inclination to take a closer look.

I got out of town as soon as I could, I didn’t want to be robbed or worse. The thought of sitting there for hours charging an EV was unthinkable.

Yet if you were to drive an EV on this route, the fastest, most direct route between Brisbane and Adelaide, you would have to stop in this train wreck of a town. My long range diesel 4WD aircon was struggling with the blazing sun and desert heat, burning heaps of fuel keeping the vehicle interior habitable, so forget the brochure EV range figures, you would have had to recharge an EV every few hundred miles. I never saw any EVs on that stretch of road, but imagine if there were more EVs on that route, and you had to queue for a charge in a place like that?

I’m glad the plans of the EV enthusiasts are faltering. There is more at stake than the embarrassment of company executives and politicians being exposed as innumerate incompetents.