Charging HYSTERIA or Valid CONCERN? EV sales surge strains Australian grid?!

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1:40Hello and welcome to another episode of the Everything Electric podcast, coming to you from both sides of the planet today. Today I'm talking to a wonderful man called Nick Black, who is head of Fleet Logistics and Electric Vehicles at Ausgrid. Ausgrid is the electricity distributor in New South Wales, so for Sydney, so basically for a lot of people. About 1.8 million people they supply electricity to, and they are engaged in this incredible transition. It's amazing the stuff we talk about in this episode. Because the uptake of electric vehicles in Australia is insane. It's just gone from a 99 % increase.

2:25That's the bottom line. It's a lot. um the um so what's happening in australia as regards the infrastructure that supports those vehicles it's it's transitioning very fast indeed um so it's a great privilege for us to get someone like nick to to talk about it and what he's doing and the work he's doing and what is so wonderful is to hear someone who's working in that field in the electric vehicle field who just drives an electric car uh he will explain about that but you know that there he knows what he's talking about not from the point of view of some sort of theory but from the point of view of hands-on practice i need to drive my car here i need to charge it on the way is there a charger all those sort of things he is extremely aware of um and that the the whole uh you know environment in australia is changing so much with so much solar so many uh so many home batteries the way the grid is adapting to deal with all that is kind of put Australia at the forefront of the technology we're talking about.

3:28And really importantly, this is very important, Nick will be appearing at Everything Electric Sydney, which is on the 18th, 19th and 20th of September this week. If you're watching this this week at the Sydney Olympic Park. And I just had confirmation from the team that are on the ground in Australia running this show, it will be, in terms of the amount of stuff on display, the amount of test drives available, the amount of car companies that have their cars on display there, it is the biggest show that we have ever done. And we've done 28, 29 shows now for the last seven, eight, nine years. So we've done a lot of shows at a lot of places.

4:14We've had massive shows in London at the Farnborough site. which seemed like the biggest. They're not anymore. Australia is now the biggest show. It really is an illustration of what is happening in Australia. It is transformative, absolutely transformative. And Nick will be appearing there on a panel talking about charging on the street, about how Ausgrid are working towards putting more and more chargers on power posts on streets in Australia for the 40 % of, no, 30%. It's 30 % of Australian households that have nowhere off the street to park. We saw some brilliant solutions in the Melbourne show last year.

4:56I'm sure they'll be on display in the Sydney show. I know that the Sydney show is going to be amazing. So if you're in the greater New South Wales, Sydney area, it's worth going. Even if you're like in New Zealand, go over for the weekend. If you're in Singapore, pop down. It's really worth a look. It's going to be amazing. Anyway, that's all. So please do welcome onto the Everything Electric podcast, Nick Black from Ausgrid. Our three free YouTube channels on EVs and clean energy tech are funded by our fun-packed Test Drive-tastic events in the UK and Australia. Next up, Everything Electric Sydney.

5:38All events include a B2B EV Day and commercial vehicles too. So Nick, thank you very much for joining us. And this is just, it's close to my heart, what is going on in Australia. I just think it's an extraordinary change. And I would love to find out more. But can you just start out by explaining what your role is and what Ausgrid is for people outside Australia and what your role is within that? Yeah, sure. Ausgrid is a distribution network service provider. So basically, I believe what you call them in the UK is a DSO, but we own and operate the poles and wires that distribute electricity from the really high voltage networks through to people's homes and the businesses that consume electricity.

6:27Right. And my role within Ausgrid is I'm head of logistics, fleet and electric vehicle charging. Right, which sounds like it's right in our ballpark. So the bits I understand is the electric vehicle charging. So, I mean, could you get a bit more granular on that? The first one was logistics. So is that – what does that entail? Yeah, so logistics entails basically the Amazon of Ausgrid. So it's about getting all the materials that we need to build and maintain the electricity network out to the local stores because our network serves 1.8 million customers and Australia is a very large place, so it's over a large portion of land and we basically have to distribute all the materials.

7:18We've got a big warehouse and then we put them all out into the depot stores. But part of that means we've got a freight team, so we've got our own delivery team and that creates a lot of exciting opportunities around electrification of heavy vehicles and heavy transport. Right. Right. Because I mean, I think that's the big difference. So, you know, from the point of view of this country, you know, we have the national grid, which is, it is what it says. It is the whole country is kind of wired up by the national grid. And then there's individual companies that are then distributing that. But Australia is slightly different.

7:54And so you have a distinct geographical area that you cover, but you're presumably connected to, say, a grid in South Australia, or Victoria, or Queensland. I mean, there is a sort of full connection. Yeah, we call it the Eastern Seaboard, which is a national electricity market. It goes all the way from Queensland all the way down through New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and then it's got interconnectors to Tasmania as well. And we're one of the distributors in New South Wales. There's three electricity distributors in New South Wales. There's Ausgrid, Endeavour and Essential Energy, and we're one of them.

8:29And we're probably similar to UK Power Networks. Right, yes. Yeah. Okay, so it's a – but that, I mean, what is unique about it, what I wanted to kind of get people to understand is the size of that grid. It's not necessarily the population that it serves. You know, there's bigger populations around the world, but it's such a long, thin strip of wires that really have to go a long way. It is, yeah. You think about where they're going and then the density of the population, like you're saying, is much less. I mean, there's probably, I don't know the exact number, probably 10 million people served by those many, many thousands of kilometres of distance covered.

9:11Yes. I mean, you've got to cut, I think the way that we can understand in this country is it's if you made London stretched over 3 ,500 miles, you know, suppose, because the sort of population of the centre of London is, I think, 12 million or something like that. So it's that site, you know, and the amount, it's just, it's an absurd comparison, but the amount of wire that's needed to join all those people up in London is quite short. We're all next to each other, whereas in Australia, it's a long way. I mean, when I was in the big solar farm we were discussing before we started, which is like built underneath huge pylons carrying power from Queensland into New South Wales, as I understood it at the time.

9:58You know, you see the distance that's gone. I'd driven all day to get there. I was in Queensland. I drove all day, you know, a long way. And those wires were going that distance as well. You know, it's a very different arrangement of the infrastructure. It is. I mean, those interconnectors, there's 1 ,000 kilometres easy between Brisbane and Sydney. Those interconnectors run that whole way. Then it's the same between Victoria, same again to South Australia. And we're building more of them to capture more of the types of solar farms that you've seen out to more of the regional areas, many, many more thousands of kilometres of high-voltage infrastructure.

10:39But then, I mean, I think the fascinating thing with Australia is, from my experience of, you know, repeated visits, is that I don't know when it would be, say, 10 years ago, you know, if it was that long ago, but, you know, certainly a while ago, I remember because I was doing a lot of stuff with Tesla, they lent me a car. I drove a Tesla Model X from Sydney to Brisbane to go and visit my mother-in-law because they wanted the car delivered there. And there wasn't charging infrastructure. You know, it did exist. There were Tesla superchargers on that road between Sydney and Brisbane, and we stopped there.

11:15And my strongest memory is stopping at a kind of theme park with a lot of koalas where there were chargers. It was so hot, and I was desperate for a wee. I definitely needed the toilet. And because the Model X has the ridiculous doors that spring up, it was a busy car park. You know, I got out and going, just plug it in, I've got to go. and then my wife opened one of the doors and immediately 10 people go oh my god what's that no people hadn't seen it and i was having to explain it was so much pain it was very so the whole at that stage the whole point of charging a car on a long journey forget it that's the least of your problems the problem is where is the where's the gents can i get there quickly we've been in the car four hours you know and anyway but what's happened between then and the last time i was there, which was January this year, was mind-boggling.

12:09Just walked down a street in Brisbane. You know, my family, Judy's family, my wife's family, are from Brisbane. At Brisbane, you sort of think, I'd seen electric cars in Sydney. I could, you know, Sydney felt like that. Brisbane's full of them. It's absolutely, my sister-in-law, my niece, both bought electric cars, completely nothing to it. There wasn't their uncle that said you should buy electric. They just did it because they were better. So the uptake now this year has been, I mean, it does feel like it's been a real spike this year of uptake. Yeah, I think we've seen a huge uptake, especially over the last few months.

12:46But ever since, I guess, the conflict in the Middle East, there's been a continual uptake in electric vehicles, getting up around sort of 30 % of sales now within Australia, which has been massive because we were sitting around sort of 8%, 9 % for a long time. And now we're really seeing that uptake. But one of the challenges we're also seeing is we still have a lack of the charging infrastructure that's required to really scale that uptake. And that's something as an electricity distributor that's probably a little bit different to the UK model is something where we've been advocating and putting our hand up to say, look, we can help.

13:27We already own the poles and wires on the side of the road and we believe we can help extend the charging that people receive at home to the kerb by putting regulated charges on the power poles and really extending home charging to the kerbside because 30 % of New South Wales doesn't have access to off-street parking where they can charge. And this is a barrier that we're seeing to get people behind the wheel and get them electrified. Yeah. Yeah. So that is, I mean, I think that is the, you know, out of all the, like, if you talk to members of the public who haven't got an electric car, and there's a whole list of excuses, they've all reduced.

14:09Yes. Those excuses have got smaller and smaller. But I think the really legitimate one, it's the same in this country, is we have about 40 % of our households don't have anywhere, so higher than Australia, don't have anywhere off the street to park. and that is much harder, although, I mean, about five of the people I work with regularly all have electric cars. None of them can park them off the street and they kind of cope. But it's definitely harder. There's no question. It's harder and it's more expensive, I suppose. It is. But I guess we've seen the UK model. I understand there's now 100 ,000 curbside charges that have been rolled out, which has really helped to alleviate that.

14:44And that's something where we want to step in and create a model where we own and maintain the kerbside charger just like a power pole, but we create open access at that charger so that you create competition at the socket to really lower the cost at the kerb to potentially ensure or create a playing field where you've got cost parity to home charging that you do at the kerbside and with the aim to really accelerate the uptake of EVs. Yeah. So you wouldn't actually operate them day-to-day taking payments for the electricity. You will just supply the hardware and the support for it. Is that the way it works?

15:25Exactly. So it would work the way that the market works today where we supply the poles and wires. And as part of that, we charge a tariff that's charged to an electricity retailer. And the electricity retailer charges the customer at the end of the day. And this proposal we have is exactly the same model, except in this situation, it could either be an electricity retailer, it could be an e-mobility service provider that charges the end customer. But yeah, we wouldn't be operating any of these charges. There's sort of a neutral host, I guess you could say. Yes. Yeah. No, that sounds an amazing solution.

16:01And what you do, that's the difference, I guess, between the two countries. So I think quite a few people, certainly who live in big towns and cities, will have seen we've converted. I mean, they have to be, I don't know what it's called, like roadside, not curbside. You know, they're always the ones that are next to the curb. We're using old lampposts. Not that old, but older lampposts. And they just replace the door and they put a socket in the door. What you're talking about, and I've seen them in Australia, is you'll attach a unit to a, because you're mainly timber poles, am I right in assuming?

16:34that yeah so i think that's a bit of a difference between the the uk electricity market and and the australian is we we have a lot of power poles running down the street whereas uh understand in the uk you've got a lot of underground power yeah and then you've got the street light so our model is to attach it to the power pole um but but do that in a way that also uh creates competition at the socket so if you live on that street you can still choose who you're buying your energy off at that local charge point. And that's what we've been proposing. But for us to be able to do that, we require a change to the regulation.

17:09So the electricity regulation doesn't allow Ausgrid to own and maintain curbside charges at this point in time, but we've been working with the regulators and the government to change that regulation. Right. I mean, I think that sounds very familiar, that there is a lot of, because the nature of the grid has changed so much. I mean, this is the sort of thing we should have mentioned is that the uptake of solar and more recently batteries in homes in Australia is, you know, I think pretty much more than any other country on the planet. Yeah, one third of homes have solar on them now and there's a huge amount of solar pumping into the grid where the wholesale cost of energy is nearing sort of zero during the day.

17:56Yeah. No, I mean, that is, I mean, that's so disruptive to a market, wasn't it? Because if you think when I first visited Australia, which was 1989, the Christmas of 1989, I don't know what the percentage of coal power for the electricity would have been then, but very high. I mean, and it was very simple, wasn't it? There was, you burn coal there, send the electricity down the wire, you plug your kettle in, it boils. You know, it's not, and now the electricity that boils your kettle could come from your roof. It could come from your neighbour's roof. It could come from a solar farm up there. I mean, it's mind-boggling how that's – I mean, for Ausgrid, just as technologically, I'm assuming that was quite a challenge.

18:37Forget electric cars for a moment. How do you deal with 10 ,000 power plants as opposed to two? Yeah, exactly right, and it's a distributed nature of it. So some of the other initiatives that we've been driving forward as part of what Ausgrid could offer into the market is more around those two-way flows of distributed power. So having local community batteries within the network and having solar off people's homes means we can store it and then send it out and create a community battery that basically allows customers to have, I guess, a virtual battery on the network and receive lower costs for their electricity because it's contained within that local area.

19:19It doesn't need to travel across these thousands of kilometres of cables that we've been talking about. Yeah. But then one of the – I would imagine the challenge is similar there. There is a particular motorway rest stop which I visit. It's between me and London. I don't visit it very often because there's no point. But there are currently, I think there's 26 ultra-rapid chargers installed under covers that don't work because there's no power. But they've installed them. I mean, I'm talking not last week. These were installed, one set of them two years ago. So there's this incredible challenge for us.

20:04And, I mean, to be fair to our networks and our distributors, there are places you can go where there's like 40 or 50 ultra-rapid charges in one place with batteries, with a solar farm. You know, we have got that and it's got so much better. But when you see that bottleneck, you go, oh, my God, someone's invested that money in those chargers, redesigned the car park to fit them, put them in, and nothing has happened. You can't use them. There's nothing, you know, they're all fenced off still. Yeah. But is that, I mean, is that a, I think that is a very big problem here to supply the power that those need.

20:37But is that less of a problem in Australia, would you say? I think when we're talking about the high-powered chargers, we probably share with the similar challenges that you're talking about. I haven't seen people actually install the chargers waiting for the power. I've more heard about that we need the power now because we want to install the chargers as soon as possible. But installing these faster chargers and something like that is equivalent to installing a 15-storey apartment block. So it does take time to do the planning, understand the power network, and in the situation I'm sure you're talking about, There's probably major upgrades that are required to get the capacity to those locations.

21:14But some of the things we've been working on around that have been sort of critical peak tariffs or dynamic connections, saying that you can connect. And when the capacity is available, you can have full fast charging. But when it's not available, we just need to curtail you a little bit, which allows the customer to connect more quickly. And then some of the other things we've been testing with our own fleet, when I sort of stepped back to the logistics side, we were testing the electric prime mover and we wanted to get a trial up really quickly with the Volvo electric prime mover. So we looked at a fast charging battery solution where it's got a battery and the fast charge all sort of co-located in the same system.

21:58So it needed a small connection to our network because even for us, we've got to still go through the process of upgrading the network if we need a lot of capacity. So we plugged it in and it allowed us to get up and running in a really short period of time so we could run that trial with the electric prime mover. So, I mean, because I think that I know what you mean. Yeah. But I just think some people might not know what a prime move. You're talking a great big truck. Yeah, a great big truck, like a 40-ton truck. I don't know, we call them semi-trailer or I'm not sure what you call them in the UK.

22:30I think we call them an articulated lorry, which does sound very 1930. Gosh, articulated lorry, yes. Yeah, so a big, big articulated lorry. A big track. So that, you know, the batteries on those are colossal anyway, but they can charge at very, very high speed. Are you talking like one? I mean, I've said the ones I saw in Germany, 1.5 megawatts. Yeah, no, the one we were testing was the Volvo one. It was the generation one. So it had a 360-kilowatt-hour battery and it charged at 250 kilowatts. So it wasn't huge. But still, just to get the 250 kilowatts, we went for a fast charger that had an inbuilt battery so that it could have a small connection.

23:05but still pump the charge out of its battery into the, I'll call it, was it articulated? Articulated lorry, it does sound so. Articulated lorry, very quickly. We call them trucks or lorries. I don't think that shows my age. Oh, there's an articulated lorry. That's a ridiculous term. But, yeah, so that's certainly a solution I've seen here. And, I mean, your knowledge of this would be much greater than mine, But from what I can understand from talking to big battery companies is the sort of wholesale cost of batteries has dropped so dramatically that, you know, 15 years ago, the idea of putting in a four megawatt hour battery, you know, you could do it.

23:49Technically, they've existed, but it would have cost an absolute fortune. I mean, have you seen, are you experiencing that it is a cheaper, it's a more economic option now? It's getting there with this. I mean, this was a trial for us, but it's getting to the point where it is a more economic solution for faster charging to then connect more quickly, have a slightly smaller connection, but have the battery and the charger to allow you to, you know, charge it up over a longer period of time and then discharge it very quickly. Yeah. But we have seen in general the cost of batteries coming down substantially, and we see that in all the vehicles we're buying.

24:31We're trying to electrify our fleet. We've got 1 ,600 vehicles across our fleet, which includes heavy trucks, passenger vehicles, utility vehicles, vans, and we've been trying to electrify them as quickly as we can, but we're seeing as battery prices come down and the products, the OEMs supplying the vehicles, market share increases, we're seeing those prices decrease to the point at which it now not only makes sense because we want to electrify everything and that's what we want to do at Ausgrid, but it also makes sense commercially to do that. Yeah, right. Because, I mean, yeah, presumably once you're running a fleet, I think that's where, you know, the shifts that we've seen in the last, like, I'm talking 25, 30 years.

25:21I think the Prius is a good example because I remember, like, having a lift in a Prius in Los Angeles and going, what the hell is this? It's so weird. When you stop at the traffic lights, there's no noise. I thought the engine had broken. you know all that stuff and then you and they didn't sell i've talked to a Toyota about this they were a kind of flop for a few years until a couple of taxi companies bought some because they've got the spreadsheet they know how much they spend they spend on petrol and diesel and they look at that and they go oh my god that is cheaper it does 60 to 70 miles per gallon we haven't got anything else that does that if you drive it carefully you can get 80 miles you know all that and then so then they buy 50 Priuses and then people are riding them and go this is all right?

26:01And their sales graph of that is so similar now to electric cars. Huge resistance, huge doubt, lots of questioning, lots of skepticism, which I think is perfectly justified. It's a new technology. Who knows if it's going to work? And what we're seeing now is, you know, the taxi you went in is electric. The bus you caught is electric. Your neighbor's got one. It's a bloke over the road who you were convinced was an idiot when he got one a few years ago he's still driving it and it's fine that that sort of spread but then when you're so when you're running a fleet you're seeing we spend x probably millions of pounds a year on fuel for that entire fleet so millions of dollars um yeah yeah you know and is it so i mean what yours is it cheaper then if you if you're plugging them in as opposed to filling them with with liquid Yeah, well, I mean, we're finding it's a lot cheaper, but also to make it cheaper again, we're having to do what I guess any consumer could do to avoid the peak cost of electricity when electricity prices are high, which is between 3 and 9pm, and we're starting to put smart charging out across all our depot locations and all our sites and offices.

27:16So when our fleet vehicles are charging, we're still cost-optimising the cost of electricity and then the overall cost compared to diesel is way less. But it's not just the diesel cost that's less, it's the maintenance cost that's less and it's the overall running cost. One thing we have seen is that the cost of tyre replacement has gone up slightly for these electric vehicles, but the overall total cost of running the electric vehicles is substantially cheaper. I think we're probably saving for a passenger vehicle$1 ,500 per annum and as I said, we're only trialling with the truck so we don't have a number yet on that.