Crowd-funded EV charger opens in remote town after being towed there by Model X

The Western Australian rural town of Ravensthorpe has this week inaugurated its first electric vehicle charger, following a successful crowdfunding campaign launched by the Australian Electric Vehicle Association.

The new DC EV charger was sourced from Perth-based charging infrastructure installer Gemtek and was supplied by Brisbane-based EV charging company Tritium.

However, it was the Chuffed crowdfunding campaign that raised enough donations from individuals and corporations to purchase and install two chargers – one which was this week installed in Ravensthorpe, and another which was previously installed in the Western Australian town of Lake Grace.

According to the AEVA, a convoy of electric vehicles left from Perth behind Tesla Owners Club of Western Australia (TOCWA) member Harald Murphy, who towed the Tritium 50kW charger behind his Tesla Model X.

Ravensthorpe local Lloydey’s Power Services had already trenched the conduit and poured the slab for the charger prior to the convoy’s arrival, allowing for relatively rapid deployment of the much-needed EV charger in one of Western Australia’s major crossroad towns.

Located 541 km south-east of Perth and 40 km inland from the south coast of Western Australia, Ravensthorpe is representative of the need for rural deployment of electric vehicle chargers in rural towns, so as to provide access for long EV road trips as well as cross-country trips.

Another issue presents itself, however, in towns like Ravensthorpe where much of the fringe-of-grid infrastructure is weak and supply can be temperamental.

According to the AEVA, during commissioning of the new Ravensthorpe charger a pole-top fuse blew out, and the charger is currently set to about half power until supply a supply upgrade is confirmed with Western Power – which the AEVA is hoping will be some time by the middle of the year.

The Lake Grace 50kW EV charger was installed and commissioned back in September 2020, the first as part of the Western Australian branch of AEVA’s crowdfunding campaign to raise money to install DC fast chargers between Esperance and Perth.

Crowdfunding EV chargers in Western Australia is by no means a new method of working to deploy EV charging technology, either.

Back in November 2021, we reported about a crowdfunding campaign to install two Tritium 50kW chargers in the small Western Australian roadhouse community of Caiguna.

However, due to the remote nature of Caiguna, the two chargers will be powered by a unique technology called Biofil, which uses waste fryer oil to power a generator which, in turn, powers an EV charger.

A Polestar 2 also took off this January on an 800-kilometre road trip across the Nullarbor Desert to test out a handful of these new Biofil EV chargers, stopping in at Caiguna as well as two temporary Biofil chargers at Southern Cross, west of Kalgoorlie, and at Norseman between Kalgoorlie and Caiguna.