Wanneroo installs 20 EV charging stations, as grass roots government gets ready

If Australia is to be ready for the exponential increase seen overseas in electric vehicle sales (and business EV fleets), then we need to prepare for their arrival now – and EV charging stations are an integral part of that.

To that end, the announcement from E-Station and the City of Wanneroo (about 40km north of the Perth CBD in WA)  is a welcome reminder that the EV revolution is not something needing policy only from the federal level: governments at all levels need to be pro-active in preparing for the coming EV fleet change-over.

Situated in the council car park of their new building in the heart of Wanneroo, the forward thinking local government there has just installed twenty AC EVSEs (Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment) in preparation for changing-over their fleet of vehicles to EV in the next few years.

These twenty EVSEs are capable of being data connected and can automatically demand manage themselves to limit the total EV charging current within a pre-set maximum should this be needed.

Mind-you, they may not need a lot of demand managing: their forward thinking was not just limited to installing these EVSEs – they are part of a new building designed to include significant EV charging capacity into the future through installing an additional dedicated distribution transformer just for EVSEs.

This transformer is capable of supplying 7kW to all of the twenty single phase EVSEs, plus two three phase AC EVSEs installed outside the building for public use.

As an example of what policy and planning for EVs is needed, as well as providing a best practice example for other councils and businesses to learn from: it would be hard to go past this as a excellent first-step for fleet and building EV adoption planning.