An EV (electric vehicle) boss has said the utilisation rate of charging stations in Australia is around 2 percent, with underlying implications for the national grid.
At a recent parliamentary inquiry hearing, Lex Forsyth, the CEO of Janus Electric, a company specialising in converting conventional trucks to electric ones, raised concerns about the low utilisation rate of charging stations nationwide.
“We have inefficient charging networks where there’s been millions of dollars designated to charging stations right around the country that are being utilised 2 percent of the time,” he told the Standing Committee on Climate Change, Energy, Environment, and Water.
On top of the low utilisation rate, Forsyth said the current charging networks were putting strain on the national grid.
The CEO explained that none of the country’s EV networks had been built with effective storage that could use the grid when it was available and store electricity for later use.
This resulted in more pressure on the grid when the networks were used during peak time.
“We don’t think about how we best utilise our infrastructure. It is underutilised for 18 hours of the day,” Forsyth said.
“We need to have storage attached to our electric vehicle networks, and we need to utilise our grid 100 percent of the time for 24 hours of the day.”
Around 229 of the charging locations were ultra-fast and the remaining 583 were fast.
Among the jurisdictions, New South Wales had the most significant number of charging locations at 229, followed by Victoria at 205, and Queensland at 151.
Severe Lack of Charging Facilities for Electric Trucks
Another concern raised by Forsyth was the severe lack of charging facilities for heavy electric vehicles, as most charging stations focused on cars and not trucks.“There’s a handful of charge stations that you can actually get a semi-trailer into to recharge,” he said.
Forsyth said this posed a risk to the EV transition as a significant portion of emissions came from heavy vehicles.
“My major concern for the adoption of EV vehicles is that no one is recognising the transport sector and electric trucks as probably the industry-leading sector, given that 17 percent of all our emissions come from the transport sector. And that [emission] mainly comes from the heavy vehicle sector,” he said.
High-Cost Barrier to Electric Trucks
Meanwhile, Mark Gjerek, the managing director of the Heavy Vehicle Industry Australia (HVIA), a peak industry body, told the Committee that high costs were a major barrier to the adoption of heavy electric vehicles in Australia.Gjerek said the upfront ownership cost of electric trucks was a significant investment for freight operators, most of which are small and medium businesses.
According to HVIA Chief Advocacy Officer Adele Lausberg, the cost of an electric truck was two to three times higher than a conventional one.
She also noted that freight operators would have to invest in charging infrastructure as it was not convenient to charge electric trucks at public charging stations.
“Imagine a car pulling up into some of those bays and then a truck trying to pull up into some of those bays, it’s very difficult to manage,” Lausberg said.
Gjerek gave the example that a slow charger for electric trucks would cost a few thousand dollars, and it would cost much more to install the facility to 10-20 trucks.
“The cost for a high charge a high powered charger ranges up to potentially $50,000 (US$33,000)-$100,000, and the megawatt charging will be even more than that,” he said.
“The biggest cost will be the infrastructure changes to support that.”
