Bear with me, but this story starts next to the rear chicken shed at Eucla Border Village roadhouse in October, 2018.
A younger and more idealistic bloke is up before dawn trying to charge his BMW I3 electric head to head further west. The Delta 22kW DC rectifier he has should do the trick in short order but keeps cutting out, interrupting his breakfast repeatedly until it’s turned down to 8 amps.
The coffee has gone cold and he’s pi***d off. Surely there is a better way to charge than relying on a roadhouse generator with variable loads?
This was the genesis for the idea of the chargepod, a standalone 50kW generator and Tritium DC charger on a mobile skid, completely independent of the grid or roadhouse electrical supply.
Most DC chargers in Australia (then and now) were and are designed to be grid connected and couldn’t cope with the frequency variation from a generator, but Tritium at that time was a locally based company and was willing to look at writing some custom software to get around this issue.
The options for charging in rural WA in 2018 were sparse so there were many potential locations for the first chargepod. The key was to service a route with the need and a friendly proprietor. For reasons beyond me the route chosen was from Perth 430 km to Geraldton, with the charger at the halfway point at Jurien Bay.
I grew up in Geraldton so I suppose this helped some people to escape south. Wade Clatworthy, the proprietor of Ampol Jurien Bay was initially sceptical but open to the idea. He probably had little idea about what would ensue but remained inquisitive and supportive to the end.
He comes out as one of the heroes of this story. The experience can’t have been too bad as he now drives a Tesla Model 3.
The chargepod functioned beautifully but copped a really erosive social media campaign because the generator used diesel to charge EVs. It seems likely that this was an orchestrated attack as it got to Russian media and a UK motor show infamous for nearly killing some of its presenters in overpowered ICE vehicles.
The chargepod was therefore moved to a relatively troll-free location with another friendly proprietor at Arthur River between Perth and Albany. There were no DC chargers on this route until Synergy installed a 50kW Tritium charger at Kojonup, freeing up the chargepod again.
In the meantime, a 40 kW DC rectifier charger was installed on the Jurien Bay service station’s electricity supply in 2019 but this created another set of problems.
An EV would pass through Jurien about every 2 weeks and would draw the full 40kW, allowing the energy provider to impose a “capacity charge” on every bill for the entire year, pushing Wade’s power bills up by 20% and making the EV charging service uneconomic.
If any of you who complained about paying 50c/ kWh read this, it’s time to hang your heads in shame.
Fortunately, Wade had a standby 88kW generator and the era of Biofil had arrived. This was the first installation of an EV charger running on veggie oil (anywhere?) and is the same Tritium Veefil unit that is currently in operation in Caiguna WA.
Complaints continued about charging fees after a flat rate of $50 per charge was set. This was a loss making operation, but Wade still had to deal with some pretty unpleasant behaviour from disgruntled EV drivers.
When a new fast food franchise moved into the roadhouse in 2022 the frying fat in use changed and the biofil suffered the equivalent of a coronary artery blockage. Wade was able to negotiate a more favourable power pricing agreement so a Tritium Veefil 50 kW charger was moved back to the service station’s electricity supply in 2022.
The chargepod had done its job again, opening up the major routes from Perth to two of WA’s major regional centres. The WA EV community rallied in support and the unit was funded to be relocated to Caiguna on the Nullarbor route.
Timing is everything. The Tritium Veefill chargers appear to have a fatal flaw resulting in the gradual failure of the CCS wiring board. It was fortunate in Jurien Bay that this coincided with the installation and commissioning of the WA EV Network’s Kempower DC charger across the road from Ampol this year.
It was time to decommission and remove this unit, presenting an opportunity to give the Hyundai Mighty electric truck (top photo) a trial run before its lap of Australia later this year. Naturally, Jon Edwards is an integral part of this whole story.
I was fortunate to drive a support vehicle 0n this trip to Jurien Bay a few days ago. Jon and Wade are both coy about money but clearly put significant capital in from the beginning without gain. In their best year they split a $2800 income before expenses.
This story is important because it tells what the tinkerers and visionaries have done for EV charging in WA, well ahead of Government.
Jon claims he is “done” but is off to Caiguna in early July to troubleshoot the Caiguna Biofil, still the only fast DC charger between Norseman and Nullarbor roadhouse in South Australia.
He has extensively trained the Caiguna staff but suspects that either the CCS board is failing or the generator’s fat diet has changed. After this, I’ve sworn off fried food for our next road trip east in September.