Consumer, industry groups slam Queensland’s “dumb” rules on home EV charging

More industry groups are lining up against the draft Queensland Energy Connection Manual, focusing on the outdated attitudes towards electric vehicle (EV) charging and the bizarre decision to depart from national inverter standards.

The key concern for the groups is that Energy Queensland hasn’t bothered to heed consultations that have already taken place, or even taken into account the evidence its own people have collected.

Industry says the proposed EV charging rules rules will put Queenslanders off from buying EVs by forbidding faster charger connections to household rooftop solar systems, and limiting energy imports to 4 kilowatts (kW).

Not only has Energy Queensland not made a business case for some of its proposals, the thrust of the manual is driven by the view that individuals can’t be trusted and therefore the networks must be allowed to control devices in the home — just in case, the submissions say.

“Many of these points have been raised multiple times, in multiple ways, by industry with Energy Queensland,” say Ross De Rango and Adam Macmillan at the Electric Vehicle Council.

“This draft of the QECM demonstrates that Energy Queensland have not, to this point, listened to industry, or embraced the goal of the National Electric Vehicle Strategy to harmonise regulatory requirements around the country in support of EV uptake.”

The draft manual has caused significant alarm, as reported on several occasions by RenewEconomy and The Driven.

Before the manual was released for public comment — a period that had to be extended because it was initially just weeks — the state was already being called out for rules that prevent EVs from using rooftop solar to charge.

At the time, in April, Energex media and policy employees told RenewEconomy that rule was under review in the upcoming draft manual.

But instead of fixing the rule, it doubled down, requiring most smart EV chargers to be part of the state electricity companies’ demand management system which gives the networks the power to turn home devices off or down at will.

Trust fall

Queenslanders should be allowed to use their EV chargers when they want to, with incentives to charge during the day when the sun is out or at night after peak usage periods, Energy Consumers Australia acting director for energy services and markets, Melissa McAuliffe, said in her submission.

In June, the organisation found that only 35 per cent of Australian households trust that energy industry companies are working in their long-term interests.

A negative experience with demand control, such as waking up to find the car didn’t charge enough overnight to get the children to school or adults to work, will torpedo that remaining confidence.

“If consumers have poor experiences due to their charger being controlled, they may be less receptive to future initiatives by the DNSP to use consumer assets to ensure a more resilient and flexible energy system,” MacAuliffe says.

The trust issue — that Queenslanders can’t be trusted to charge their EVs responsibly and therefore distributed network service providers (DNSPs) must be given control over household devices — is a fundamentally wrong way of looking at home charging, say De Rango and Macmillan.

Trials and studies of how EV charging affects the grid have been run by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), C4NET — and even Energy Queensland itself — and found that around Australia EV owners actually charge during the day or on a timer during the night, to take advantage of cheap or free power.

“For anyone not familiar with EVs – this is very easy to do,” the duo said in their submission.

“Setting the preferred charging time in the car is similar to setting a preferred radio station. And of course, there’s apps for it if that’s what the driver prefers.”

Energy Queensland’s own SmartCharge Queensland Insights found that tariff incentives alone were able to change consumer EV charging behaviour, a report that only came out in February.

Forging a new inverter path

A key bugbear in the new rules is Queensland demand that the state remove itself from national standards on inverters and require a brand new 20 amp limit for single phase homes, which make up about 90 per cent of homes in the state.

The idea is to balance load distribution phases on the grid to help with network resilience, by limiting to 20 amps any non-cooking load on a single phase circuit.

To get around this, the draft manual would require households to upgrade to a much higher capacity three phase connection at a cost of several thousands of dollars, simply to run a charger that is 12 amps higher than the proposed limit.

However, national Australian standards stipulate a maximum phase imbalance of no more than 21.7 amps, Clean Energy Council director of distributed energy Con Hristodoulidis says, which would mean Queenslanders need bespoke inverters not currently being made globally.

“We do not believe Energy Queensland has made the business case for the need for import limits,” Hristodoulidis said.

“Indeed, we are not aware of any other jurisdictions around the world currently implementing or contemplating implementing EVSE import limits. There are many jurisdictions with much lower penetration of solar PV, less abundant renewable resources and much higher penetration of EVs than Queensland.”

Just copy other states

The solution lies in adopting systems that have already been put in place in other states or simply sticking with the national standards already in place, the submissions say.

The first step is to replace import limits and the phase balancing changes with tried-and-tested market mechanisms such as time-of-use tariffs, says Hristodoulidis.

If Energy Queensland still feels the need for some level of behind-the-metre control, it could start using dynamic load balancing or orchestration for EV owners.

Energy Consumers Australia suggested monitoring the impact on the grid of all consumer energy resources, from EVs to rooftop solar and DNSPs doing localised upgrades where necessary, an investment likely offset by savings from increased network use due to the rising number of EVs.

De Rango and Macmillian suggest Queensland look at what is already being done in Victoria, South Australia and NSW around installing second lines of supply for high power fast charging, rather than tightly restricting this option.

And finally, the industry submissions ask that Queensland desist from making the choices around electrical devices any more confusing for consumers than they already are, by creating new, complicated state-based exclusions and conditions.