Streetside EV Chargers
A charging company in the United States who are financially backed by Google. Google has invested $1 billion into this charging company.
They are building these street chargers, which will be basically on power poles in the street.
You’ll be able to charge when you’re just parked in the street, and that’s what they want to do. They’re rolling them out.
Comparison with Tesla’s Charging Network
They’ve got investment from Google. So I mean, basically they’re saying we are going to be bigger than Tesla.
We’re going to build more chargers in America than Tesla. And while they clearly have the financial backing to do so.
Global Expansion of Pole-Mounted EV Chargers
So this sort of thing is happening in America. But another 149 pole mounted EV chargers are being installed in one city in Australia.
And this is just one of many different projects happening like this all over the world. They often say this EVs can never work.
They can never ever become mainstream because there’s not enough charges. Most people live in apartments.
Most people in cities live in apartments. Now, is it true that the majority of the world’s population live in apartments? No, that’s not actually true.
Myths About EV Adoption
A lot of apartment blocks are building EV chargers, and there are more and more of these kinds of charging poles are being built as well.
Sydney based plus is says it’s going to install 150 new pole mounted EV charging units across the city in Sydney as part of the first round of grants in the New South Wales Government’s curbside charging grant program.
over the past couple of years showing these projects in Germany. They’ve got these as well, but they’ve got different ones.
They’ve got ones that actually go on in the gutter. They’ve even got them in the gutter.
They’ve got them in all kinds of different locations. But basically what they’ve got is some form of having a charger on the sidewalk and usually quite often you don’t even know it’s there.
That’s the really cool thing about these charges. Imagine having like thousands of gas pumps up and down every street, right? But you don’t know they’re there and they are very, very cheap to run.
Energy is predicted to hit a marginal cost. Now Tony, Steve has been talking about this.
Benefits of Distributed Charging Solutions
Peter Diamandis been talking about this lots of different experts have been talking about energy hitting marginal costs by 2030, 2035, when renewable energy becomes the primary form of energy across, you know, basically your city or your country,
the cost of energy comes down in Australia, the cost of energy in renewable energy, states that are predominantly states where they use renewable energy, cost of energy has not gone up.
But in places like Queensland, the cost of electricity has risen. And that’s where they primarily still use fossil fuels or coal power.
So in other words, it would be very, very cheap to charge your EV.
It’d be very convenient because you can basically do it where you park it, you know go to bed, wake up and your vehicle will be charged and it’s going to become more and more common as well more and more people buy electric cars.
So a lot of people say there’s not enough charges, so I’m not going to buy an EV.
But realistically to create that change, to get governments to build out these charges, to actually invest in it, there needs to be more electric cars on the road.
Mitigating Grid Load Concerns
The New South Wales state government announced a few days ago that the recipients of the first round of EV curbside charging grants, part of a 4 million investment to install 671 EV charging ports across 391 sites in the state.
The government investment is intended to drive a further $8 million in private investment and provide vital EV charging to drivers who do not have access to their own off site parking and charging, such as those in apartments and busy metro suburbs.
The other point here is that while you can still charge your EV at a DC fast charger, you know generally you can get from about 20 to 80% charge, probably around 30 to 40 minutes.
So that’s definitely an option as well and considering the fact that most people only drive about probably 30 to 40km a day on average, then it means that you don’t only have to do that really once a week.
Amongst the winners of the charging grants in New South Wales was plus a, yes, a provider of end to end metering services and infrastructure solutions for both large and small markets.
So if you’re wondering if you’re in Sydney, you’re wondering where abouts these pole mounted EV charging ports are going to be.
They’re going to be in Sydney’s inner west and suburbs including Waverley, Randwick, Woollahra and Lane Cove.
And here’s what they said, we believe pole mounted charges are the most safe, efficient and cost effective way to bring charging to the curb.
Utilizing existing assets significantly reduces costs, but also minimizes public inconvenience as there is no need to escape the footpath or the road.
This makes the EV charging infrastructure installation process quick and seamless, and reduces visual impacts on already busy urban streetscapes.
You know, one of the things that EV haters they like to say is also this when we’re all plugged into the grid, when everyone’s driving an EV, our electricity use will skyrocket.
Well, here’s the thing, actually not really technically true in some places. For example, in France where there’s more EVs, they’re saying that power hasn’t actually increased.
one of the big benefits to EVs, of course, is the fact that you can obviously send energy from your battery back into the grid.
Now, truthfully, in places, many cities now they’re having to turn solar panels off because they’re generating too much energy.
And during the day, there’s nowhere for that energy to go. We can’t store all that solar energy that’s one way we can store it.
Role of EVs in Energy Storage
Basically, when there’s all that excess power in the middle of the day and that energy is being completely wasted, which it is now in many countries around the world, during the middle of the day, we can save that in batteries, like in California, for example, California all that excess energy from all the solar panels there is being stored in batteries and then discharged in the evening peak between 6 p.m. to 9 p.m..
So rather than it being wasted, you can charge your EV during the day and then discharge the energy potentially to your home.
Being part of a virtual power plant, making you money potentially as well.
And then it means that essentially not only are you using clean energy, from the sun, but you’re also providing the solution to the grid.
So the solution to the grid is having that power in the peak period between 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.. Almost all cities around the world, that’s when their peak is.
And that’s where the problems are. That’s where we need big batteries.
But potentially we can avoid even having big batteries if we will most people actually use the grid and actually sign up to virtual power plants, meaning sending that energy back into the grid between 6 to 9 p.m. and then taking it out during the middle of the day when there’s too much energy.
So actually, rather than EVs being a problem, that the solution to the grid’s problems.