First KemPower fast chargers to go live in Australia

One of Australia’s first Kempower public DC fast charging sites has been spotted. It’s located in Tasmania and has been identified by one of The Driven’s readers, Charles Gregory. These fast chargers are part of the Electric Highway Tasmania initiative.

One of the sites in Dunalley seems to have a Kempower C-series unit. The C-Series units have a power range from 50 – 600 kW for distributed charging. 

It’s unclear the exact charging speed offered by this charger at this point, but it’s expected to be around 50kW+ given many other Electric Highway Tasmania sites currently offer a Tritium 50 kW unit. Much will depend on how much load the local network may allow.

This Kempower charger offers a CCS and a Chademo plug and is manufactured in Finland where the company is based. It is emerging as a major competitor to the Australian-owned Tritium that has dominated installations in this country to date.

This charger is based at Dunalley in the southeast of the Island state. It’s 56 km east of Hobart and is located where the Forestier Peninsula connects to the rest of Tasmania.

From an amenities point of view, Charles remarked that it’s located next to public toilets. There is also a park and a restaurant near this quite scenic charging location.

Since this charger is part of the Electric Highway Tasmania network, this charger is expected to be operated via the Chargefox app. 

Other Electric Highway sites have a pricing structure of $0.25 per kWh and $0.25 per minute. It’s expected to be similar for this site which doesn’t seem to be too far from completion.

In other parts of Australia, Kempower is the hardware supplier to various charging initiatives including:

• South Australia’s EV Charging Network
• Western Australia Electric Vehicle Charging Highway Network

Kempower has some of the most durable chargers across the European highway network.

In June, Kempower’s CEO Tomi Ristimäki was interviewed on The Driven podcast and shared unique insights into ending the queue charging anxiety.

The majority of the DC fast-charging sites in Australia have a Tritium charger,  so it’s good to see reliable charging hardware from another leader in EV charging.