Potential EV charging in the Outback!

[jeremy996]

One of the stranger articles I have found in the Telegraph!  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/features/remote-electric-car-charger-world-powered-used-cooking-oil/

Maybe hydrogen is not the most effective way of transversing the Red Centre!

The most remote electric car charger in the world – and it’s powered by used cooking oil

Stranded with a dead EV battery in the Australian Outback could mean you’ve had your chips; but help is at hand from an unlikely source

ByJeremy Hart10 February 2022 • 12:30pm

An unusual new charging source has just launched

After a tour bus journey too many, Australian rock legends AC/DC reportedly named their anthem Highway to Hell after the simmering ribbon of tarmac that runs through the Nullarbor Plain. It is where, the same month the song was released in 1979, the US space station Skylab crashed to earth, prompting an aggrieved Aussie shire council to send the Americans a fine for littering the Nullarbor with space debris. 

The only places to eat out in this remotest corner of the Outback are roadhouses such as the one at Caiguna, serving travellers on the Eyre Highway little other than fried food. And the very name Nullarbor means “no tree” in Latin. This pancake-flat corner of Outback, between Perth and Adelaide, is hardly the picture of a carbon-neutral nirvana.   

On average, until now, one electric vehicle (EV) every 10 weeks crosses the Nullarbor.  

Yet, with typically can-do Aussie spirit, a retired Perth engineer has worked out that the waste cooking oil put into landfill by the 10 or so Nullarbor roadhouses can be filtered and used to fuel modified generators that he has developed. 

“It takes 20 litres of chip oil to charge a car,” Edwards explains. Put into strategic locations across the Outback, the generators can charge electric vehicles in places with no mains electricity and where solar power is not yet cost-efficient. The first roadhouse to receive one of Jon Edwards’ BiØfil generators was the one at Caiguna.  

“I would say this unit would be one of the most remote TV fast-charging stations in Australia and possibly the world,” Edwards claims.

The manager at Caiguna, Troy Pike, took some convincing by Edwards to let the inventor install it. The installation ceremony last weekend brought a convoy of EV drivers and even the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to see the moment.  

“We’re here to sell fuel, not to not to sell electricity,” Pike states drily. “But you know, after careful consideration, we agreed because I believe that the electric and hybrid cars and things are the cars of the future.”

Caiguna has seen a downturn in traffic by 80 per cent during Covid as the West Australian/South Australian state border has been closed to all but supply trucks. It is scheduled to re-open in February.  Roadhouses like Pike’s want to maximise any custom they can generate. And the more fried food they serve, the more EVs they might charge.

“Over the last five years, the average number of EVs traversing the Nullarbor is five [per year],” Edwards explains, leaning on the generator as chip fat is turned into electricity and charges the first customer’s car – a Polestar 2. “We’re expecting, once word gets around that fast charging is available, to increase to 20, maybe 40, even 100 a year.”

Sporting an AC/DC Highway to Hell cap, EV enthusiast Robin Dean has made the pilgrimage from Perth to Caiguna for this piece of electric motoring and Nullarbor history. She is driving a route opened up by horses and camels and which, 80 years ago this month, was turned into a highway to get troops and munitions to the west during the Second World War. The explorer spirit is still alive now she says, but now it is electrically powered.  

“An EV is not just a city car. EV people are adventurous because maybe they want to see how far they can go and where other people haven't been before,” Dean says prior to a (fried food) Caiguna dinner. “And driving is always a risk [in the Outback]. You really have to plan your trips.”

Edwards’ generator is a fast charger. Running on filtered oil used only moments before in the frier, it takes minutes to top up the Polestar’s battery for its drive to the gold rush town of Kalgoorlie. Previously any EV pioneer would have had to stay overnight at each roadhouse to charge using a mains adaptor. 

However, the speed of charging does not overcome the paucity of other charging points in this part of Australia, nor the relatively small EV market. Both the numbers of chargers and owners needs to rise to make the finances stack up and eventually make it cost effective for solar power (currently five times as expensive, Edwards suggests) to consign the chip fat generators to standby units. 

In the meantime, Edwards has a Crowdfunding page to support the A$70,000 (£37,000) cost of each generator and close off the only unbridgeable chasm in the national Australia EV charging network.   

To lure EV explorers to the Outback, the Caiguna unit will be free of charge for the next six months. Troy Pike is hopeful that the opening of the border between West Australia and South Australia and the sense of optimism amongst the EV pioneers at Caiguna that “if you build it they will come” might turn a moment in the limelight into something long-lasting.

“I’m very interested to see how it turns out and I’m very interested to see the turnover of people and the amount of people coming through now with electric vehicles. I think it's a great step forward to reducing carbon footprint,” concludes Pike, not sounding anything like an inhabitant of a place stuck in the 1970s – immortalised in (and peppered from space by) heavy metal.

How the UK compares in terms of chargers per person

In the UK, a country with just under 29,000 chargers scattered almost the equivalent width of the Nullarbor – from Baltasound in Shetland to Land’s End in Cornwall – remoteness  makes little difference to the number of chargers per person.   

Here, the wildest parts of the UK have some of the most surprisingly advanced EV charging facilities and heavily populated parts of the south-east of England have a fraction of the chargers per head of population according to the Department for Transport/Zap-Map interactive online charging map. Suburban Castle Point council in Essex has only three chargers per 100,000 inhabitants. Yet the remote Outer Hebrides has 105 per 100,000 people.    

As charging infrastructure and range continue to be two of the barriers to EV adoption, respected electric car commentator Roger Atkins warns against ignoring any viable opportunity to charge electric cars, even in the UK where mains electricity is almost omnipresent.

“That is a very binary way to look at this,” Atkins said. “Using whatever is local, available and efficient. It is important not to let great get in the way of good.”

[Escape]

A great idea, if only for no longer needing to dump the oil in landfills. I'm sure there are some modified old diesel trucks out there running the same stuff.

I was surprised at first when I read solar power was too expensive, as they'd have plenty of sun. I guess the problem is not so much generating the necessary electricity but supplying peak power, as you need 100s kW for a fast charger. Easy enough with an oil burner that only runs when needed.

[cackshifter]

It is commendable and definitely good not to have to dump the oil but it does seem to me there is a certain irony to this. And as the EV take up increases, will chip consumption have to increase to support it? Will this induce an outback health crisis?

[garrycol]

EVs will not be viable for travel in Australia for many many years - ok as a second vehicle to run around town or for a short drive in the country but not much more.  Issue is not so much the of range as many upper end vehicles have good enough range but is excessive cost of purchase, lack of charging support and the excessive time is takes to charge to get reasonable range - many people can stop for lunch and recharge while doing so but where you need to just stop for fuel - the slow charging rate is not suitable.

 

Garry

[FridgeFreezer]

On 2/11/2022 at 7:31 AM, Escape said:

I was surprised at first when I read solar power was too expensive, as they'd have plenty of sun. I guess the problem is not so much generating the necessary electricity but supplying peak power, as you need 100s kW for a fast charger.

Same here - but yes it will be the "fast" aspect, you'd either need serious battery storage (at least 1 car's worth) or a whole football field of panels to get a solid 100kW direct.

I saw some pricing on commercial installs recently, it's about £1/w now so a 50kW install on a warehouse roof costs about £50k, I guess a generator that can provide 100kW for £37k and some used chip oil and run night & day is going to be fairly cost effective for a fair while.