victorian electric vehicle trial mid-term report - Department of Transport

The Energy NetworksAssociation (ENA)appreciates the opportunityto have participated in theVictorian Electric VehicleTrial and has been pleasedwith the results to date. Inparticular, our objectives togain, through participation,a clearer understandingof the implications of andopportunities from theintroduction of electricvehicles for energy networkshave been largely satisfied.We applaud the VictorianGovernment’s initiativein committing fundingand resources to the trialand believe that electricvehicles have a definite andimportant role in Victoria’stransport andenergy future.Energy Networks Association,8 November 20125.3 FLEET AND WORKPLACECHARGING5.3.1 How much does charginginfrastructure for corporateapplications cost?At around $5,000, charging outlet costsare generally higher than for homecharging due to the preference forincreased functionality and durability.Average charging circuit costs ofaround $2,200 are also slightly higherdue to the increased separationbetween parking locations and pointsof electrical supply. However, manyfleets have implemented lower costsolutions drawing upon existinginfrastructure and their ownelectrical tradespeople.Similar to home charging solutions, theentry-level 15A GPO electrical outletis likely to cost around $100. Howeverfor most fleets there is a preferencetowards devices with enhanced safety,security and data capture. Based uponthe trial experience this translatesto around $4,000-$6,000 for a fairlysophisticated charging outlet, althoughprices are likely to have fallen dueto market competition, economiesof scale and design/manufacturingprocess improvements.The charging circuit was generallyinstalled at the cost of the fleetoperator, ensuring strong interest inidentifying least cost solutions. For thisreason many fleets elected to installthe charging circuit themselves usingexisting infrastructure and/or their ownelectrical tradespeople. A consequenceof this is a reduction in the cost dataobtained for analysis relative to thesites installed.With reference to Table 12, the averagecost of the charging circuit was foundto be slightly higher than for homecharging at around $2,200. While thedifference between the average figuressits well within the standard deviationfor both sets of data, there is a $500difference in the median values whichreflects the generally shorter distancethat home charging circuits have totravel between the point of electricalsupply and the parking/charginglocation. It should be noted that due tothere being more control of the designsolution with owner-occupied sites,the missing data from the sites wherethe charging circuit was installed bythe fleet operator is likely to be biasedtowards lower cost solutions.No.INSTALLATIONS14AVERAGE COST $ 2,152MEDIAN COST $ 1,910STD DEV $ 1,279MAX $ 4,382MIN $ 550Table 12. Cost benchmarking of the trialfleet charging circuits.As for the home charging solutions,sites which necessitated more complexsolutions such as free-standing unitshad the potential to greatly increasecosts. In most cases lower costsolutions were able to be identified,however this often greatly extendedthe leadtime for the installation oreven resulted in a different sitealtogether serving as the charginglocation for the vehicle.