Among Ausgrid’s trials are programs to operate small- to medium-sized batteries and so-called “community power networks”, through which it could install and orchestrate solar panels and batteries in certain areas to shift daytime solar energy to the evening peaks, smoothing out grid demand.
Ausgrid’s Rob Amphlett Lewis: “We are in danger of is a two-speed transition.”
Credit: Louie Douvis
Distribution companies including Victoria’s CitiPower, Powercor and United Energy are seeking regulatory changes allowing them to install and maintain kerbside electric vehicle chargers on their power poles. Ausgrid has been allowed to run a pilot program through a subsidiary to install 1000 kerbside chargers in NSW.
Both the community power and EV-charging proposals have run into strong opposition from across the industry, including from energy retailers, charge-point operators and electric vehicle businesses.
The National Electrical and Communications Association, which represents electrical contractors, has slammed distributors’ kerbside charging plan as an “unprecedented power grab” that could drive up bills.
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AGL, one of the largest Australian power generators and retailers, said allowing distributors to control the charging infrastructure rollout could undermine incentives for competitive providers, leading to a less efficient and more expensive delivery of those assets.
“As a general economic principle, monopoly service providers are incentivised to over-price and under-service customers,” AGL said.
Electric vehicle-charging company Evie Networks raised concerns that distributors would recover costs involved from their broader regulated networks, including from non-EV drivers. “This is the wrong policy solution for the right problem,” it said.
Ausgrid has said its community power networks proposal would recover costs from the benefits it generated, and it has assured customers that the company would carry any risk around cost blow-outs in the trial phase.
Its kerbside charging plan, meanwhile, could help overcome the market failure of a lack of public EV chargers that was holding many motorists back from switching to electric vehicles, which cost less to run than petrol and diesel-powered vehicles, Amphlett Lewis said.
“There are real obstacles for people without off-street parking to feel comfortable about making their next vehicle purchase an EV, and that’s because we don’t have the sort of numbers of EV chargers in the community,” he said.
Evie Networks raised concerns that distributors would recover costs involved from their broader regulated networks, including from non-EV drivers.Credit: EV Connect
Amphlett Lewis attributes some industry pushback to concerns that distributors were seeking to expand into areas that could imperil other companies’ business models.
“We are putting our hands up to say ‘this is what we can do to support a quicker, cheaper and more equitable transition for customers’,” he said. “Tomorrow’s problems aren’t going to be solved with yesterday’s solutions.”
