Chargepost to install 20 AC pole-mounted EV charging units in Australia first trial

As covered by TheDriven earlier this week – the NSW government has announced the first round of grant recipients to install public AC kerbside charging. Of those providers, perhaps one of the lesser known is Chargepost, which will be installing 20 dual outlet charger mounted to existing pole infrastructure for the North Sydney Council.

As background, Chargepost started in Australia several years ago to get City EV EVSE units – widely used in the UK since 2018 – tested and compliant to Australian requirements.

City EV now has a significant number of runs on the board with public, fleet and private chargers of their design installed across a range of London and regional UK cities. The unit to be used here in the trial is a dual port one that enables up to two EVs to charge from the one unit – thereby reducing installation costs over two individual circuits and installations.

These units can be configured to provide up to 7kW single phase and up to 22kW three phase. A key aspect of these is the capacity to load-share. (Load sharing is the ability to maintain a maximum current draw from the unit as a whole and raise/lower the charge rate to either side as required to keep within the overall limit).

As an example, a 22kW unit can provide 22kW to one port or share the 22kW between them if two EVs are simultaneously plugged in.

That 22kW can not only be simply split as 11kW/11kW between the two outlets, as the load-share offered by the City EV unit is also capable of dynamically sharing the load according to the vehicle state of charge. For instance, if one EV is tapering off the charge as it nears 100%, the remainder of the available 22kW becomes available to the other vehicle.

In the UK, these units have commonly been deployed on street lighting poles as the move to LED lighting has freed-up considerable capacity – commonly around 25A (6kW) single phase per pole.

However, in the UK, lighting poles are usually fed as a single phase supply from underground – here, according to Bob Morris (founder and Technical director of City EV), there is a greater opportunity to install three phase up to 22kW units due to the mainly overhead three phase supply available at each pole.

Other features of the Chargepost unit are the capacity to load manage multiple units through 4G connectivity back to the central server that manages the connection and billing systems as well as operation of the unit via an App and the inclusion of a credit card reader to simplify payment.

It is expected that the first Chargepost City EV units will be installed in the 3^rd quarter of this year, once appropriate council approvals processes are developed and worked through.

In total, there are eight recipients of the first round of NSW public charger grants with a variety of units being rolled out for trialing. It will be interesting to see which of these initial systems prove the more reliable, as well as easiest to use.

Presumably the second round of grants will be informed by the experiences from this – including, for the councils involved, how to streamline the site selection and approvals processes. For the almost 30 per cent of NSW drivers do not have access to private, off-street parking to charge: a quick, smooth rollout of public AC charging cannot come fast enough!