Image: Chargefox
The Victorian Government has announced it will stump up more cash to support the installation of ultra-rapid EV charging stations in five more locations across the state.
The announcement was made by Minister for Energy Lily D’Ambrosio at the opening of such a facility in Euroa yesterday; which was also supported by government funding.
“Uptake of electric vehicles will help us reduce emissions and to tackle climate change,” said Minister D’Ambrosio. “More Victorians will be driving electric vehicles in the future, that’s why we’re building the infrastructure to be ready to meet this demand.”
$2 million will be provided by the government for the construction of new stations, to be located in Melbourne, Ballarat, Horsham, Torquay and Traralgon. The facilities will be capable of power output of up to 350kW, and provide up to 400km of range in just 15 minutes – assuming a vehicle can handle that rate of charging. Just as a comparison, a standard domestic power point can add about 3-5 km over the same duration.
Image: Chargefox
All the new sites will be powered by 100% renewable energy. Pricing for use of the chargers wasn’t available at the time of publishing.
The Euroa site opened yesterday is a ChargeFox project. The company was awarded a $1 million dollar-for-dollar grant from the Victorian Labor Government to develop the site at Euroa and another at Barnawartha North, which will open soon.
ChargeFox says it plans to a total of 21 locations for its initial network. The stations will be located on major highways connecting Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane; along with three in Western Australia plus other popular destinations.
ChargeFox EV charging network rollout
As well as sourcing 100% green power, the company states it will be adding solar panels and battery storage on-site at some of the stations.
While electric vehicles only make up 0.1 per cent of new car sales in Australia at present, a report published earlier this year stated EV uptake had the potential to make up 90 percent of all cars and light commercial vehicles on Australian roads by 2050. However, “potential” is the operative word – that very optimistic outlook required the right combination of incentives, vehicles and infrastructure.
While on the topic of EV charging, SQ’s Ronald has previously tackled the question of how many solar panels are needed to charge an EV and more recently we’ve published a guide to solar and electric cars.
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Public money going into construction (and presumably the cost of the land purchase or lease) of fast electric car chargers. Then I hope the public takes a share of the income that is generated by the sale of the electricity. Otherwise this is just a gift to certain companies and not others, eg Tesla who does not get one cent of public money for development of their supercharger network.
What is the cost of electricity to get a car to travel 400 kilometres. When charged in 15 minutes.??