Australia's first Electric Highway!

Post by **jonescg** » Thu, 26 Nov 2015, 05:21

Good news everybody!

The Harvey charging station is up and running! It's still a bit rustic, but both the fast charger, and the level 2 AC charge point (and 15 A GPO) are operational in the orange capital of the south west. I say rustic because the parking bays have not yet been excavated and sealed

Donnybrook has been installed, but the Fast DC side is still showing an error, so don't count on fast DC just yet. The Fast AC and the L2 bollard are fully operational though.

Friday will see Nannup and Dunsborough commissioned - we'll keep you posted on how we get on.

Post by **photomac** » Thu, 26 Nov 2015, 06:15

That is great news Chris! Perfect timing for me, I will be on my honeymoon! Will I have the first honeymoon drive in an EV in WA?

Post by **g4qber** » Thu, 26 Nov 2015, 06:49

Bmw owners will have to wait for 3.2 hours to get to 80%

Post by **Jasmin** » Thu, 26 Nov 2015, 14:51

I see what you mean about "rustic"!

Post by **jonescg** » Thu, 26 Nov 2015, 15:58

g4qber wrote: Bmw owners will have to wait for 3.2 hours to get to 80%

Yes - forgot to mention that some sweet little thing broke the latch off the CCS Combo plug, meaning the Combo fast DC option will be non-operational. We hope to install the new latch on Friday.

Post by **Rusdy** » Thu, 26 Nov 2015, 17:25

jonescg wrote: Good news everybody!

The Harvey charging station is up and running! ...

Friday will see Nannup and Dunsborough commissioned - we'll keep you posted on how we get on.

Yay yay yay yay yay yay yay yay yay

Thanks for the hard work guys (and gals)!

Post by **g4qber** » Fri, 27 Nov 2015, 13:35

Who's the Man in the picture ?

Post by **MDK** » Fri, 27 Nov 2015, 14:01

g4qber wrote: Who's the Man in the picture ?

No-one of consequence...

Post by **reecho** » Fri, 27 Nov 2015, 23:52

A watched pot never boils Matt........

Post by **jonescg** » Sat, 28 Nov 2015, 15:33

Covered some distance yesterday in the slate grey machine

Nannup is fully operational! The latch on the CCS plug hasn't been damaged either.

Dounsborough is operational - but the CCS plug has been damaged. Appears to be schoolies week down there.

We're going to cover some distance today too. We'll check on the modem at Augusta as it doesn't appear to be talking to the network. Otherwise this charger is fully operational. CCS plug and all!

Then back through Dunsborough to repair the CCS plug latch, and Busselton for the same treatment. We'll get more latches made up in a weeks time to repair Donnybrook, Harvey and Mandurah. We'll fix Donnybrook at the same time we get to the source of it's errors.

Looking more like an Electric Highway now!

Post by **jonescg** » Mon, 30 Nov 2015, 01:19

Another update on the highway - Dunsborough is fully operational and the CCS Combo plug has been repaired. Hopefully it will fit the socket as is, but it might need a little filing at the top if it's not quite right.

Busselton has also had its CCS Combo plug fixed. We'll get the remaining plugs in Harvey, Donnybrook and Mandurah fixed late next week. 3D printing in its element!

All we need to do now is find out what's causing the error with Donnybrook and then there's just two stations left to go - Fremantle and Bridgetown.

If you have an EV - go for a drive down south. Cause you can

Post by **coulomb** » Mon, 30 Nov 2015, 13:27

jonescg wrote: If you have an EV - go for a drive down south. Cause you can

Err, I think you forgot this clause: "and you live in Perth, " . Perhaps more EVers live in Perth than any other city, but the majority surely live elsewhere.

I suppose you could say that this topic is for people in south west Western Australia, but some others of us do read it. Wistfully...

Post by **4Springs** » Wed, 09 Dec 2015, 13:27

Hi Guys, it's great to see you are showing those doubters what's what!

jonescg wrote:I suspect your car might be a pile of rust before DC fast charging is available on our most common routes.

Original Post

Post by **jonescg** » Wed, 09 Dec 2015, 15:40

Never been happier to be wrong!

Post by **acmotor** » Wed, 09 Dec 2015, 16:37

...and as technology does.... in the mean time the model S became available in Oz.

Post by **jonescg** » Wed, 09 Dec 2015, 20:59

Then why are Teslas the main users of each charging station?

Post by **offgridQLD** » Wed, 09 Dec 2015, 21:22

I would say that's because the Tesla model S has the most number sold in - WA or is it the leaf?

Kurt

Post by **jonescg** » Wed, 09 Dec 2015, 21:36

I'd say there are more Leafs than Teslas at this stage, but we'd be pretty close to 300 EVs all told in the West.

More likely, the people with Teslas are more adventurous than those with shorter range EVs, but still charge at the fast chargers all the same. When Matt and I returned from Augusta, we stopped in at Busselton to fix the CCS latch and grabbed a 15 min charge. This got us back to Perth in time, as I had to work an hour later. So we used it out of convenience. There's still a need for fast chargers on the highway, even with 350-400 km range.

Post by **MDK** » Fri, 11 Dec 2015, 17:01

I have some usage data for the Electric Highway

For most of the DC charging stations I only have around 5 days worth of data - and half of those stations were commissioned at the start of those 5 days so it's hard to draw too many conclusions from those.

For the West Perth and Mandurah stations I have 14 days worth of data, which is a bit more useful.

West Perth sees between 3 and 4 charging sessions a day, charging an average of 9.7kWh per session, or 35kWh per day
About 55% of these charging sessions are Nissan Leaf; around 20% each for Tesla and i-MiEV, with BMW i3 rounding up the last 5% or so.

Mandurah (about 70km South of the Perth CBD) sees about 2 charging sessions a day, an average of 10.3kWh per session and 20kWh per day.
60% Leaf; 20% Tesla; 20% i-MiEV

The others (bearing in mind the shorter reporting period) see between 1 and 2 charges per day; about equally split between Leaf/Tesla/i-MiEV.

Bear in mind that before the Harvey station was commissioned it was difficult for Perth based Leafs and i-MiEVs to make it beyond Mandurah.
g4qber's 80km range i-MiEV still had to make an intermediate stop to make Mandurah->Harvey but for a Leaf or slightly less used i-MiEV it should be easier now.
That means it's likely the other stations are seeing a great deal more use now, unfortunately we don't have access to any recent data. I'm working on it.

I've seen 36 unique RFID cards used over the reporting period. I don't know how many EVs there are in WA, but I assume most would know about the Electric Highway by now.

Post by **jonescg** » Sat, 12 Dec 2015, 06:11

Today I drove down south in my oil-burning Honda CRX to check on a few of the RAC EH chargers.

First stop Harvey where I replaced the broken CCS Combo latch with a new, 3D printed one. It appears to work, but won't know till Joseph goes for another tour down south.

While I was taking the broken one out, this little guy abseiled out to safety...

Then on to Donnybrook where a suspected IGBT error needed to be fully diagnosed. I de-powered it and had a coffee in the 10 minutes it takes to fully discharge. Testing all of the diodes means taking the huge input capacitor bank out so you can remove the busbars linking them. They all showed the right forward voltages, and nothing in reverse, so they're probably okay. Likewise with the output filter diodes, and the bridge rectifier diodes.

Finally the snubber diode was checked, and it too is up to spec.

So there's a good chance it just needed a hard restart, but I didn't have an EV to attempt a DC fast charge. Hopefully we can know more soon.

I then replaced the CCS Combo latch - it too was broken before it was even commissioned.

Remember folks: Press the button in before yanking on it!!!

A few pictures of the Donnybrook charger site:

My poor old CRX is not quite ready for an electric heart...

Still, it should be operational, and remember, if you see red LEDs in the distance, just follow the instructions and reset it.

Post by **g4qber** » Sat, 12 Dec 2015, 12:29

BMW BEVs, stay a while longer at
A) Mandurah
Maybe b) Bunbury
C) Busselton
D) Augusta

Post by **g4qber** » Sat, 12 Dec 2015, 16:24

Dual bp stations open in baldivis. Perhaps one day they'll see the light n get some fast chargers

Post by **jonescg** » Sat, 12 Dec 2015, 16:40

Augusta CCS should work - you just need to make sure the microswitch is activated upon pushing it into the car.
Busselton CCS is the same. It's probably an alignment issue, as it was a bit more difficult to push the button and make it work after swapping out the latch.
Bunbury CCS has been repaired with a re-glued latch. We'll see how long it lasts.

I'm really not a fan of these type-1 combo plugs. Complicated protocol, reliance on a microswitch to commence a charge, and the whole lot falls apart when a cheap plastic latch breaks...

Post by **g4qber** » Sat, 12 Dec 2015, 18:30

Harvey works with bmw. Clicks like original. Thanks rods friend n Chris
Waroona was locked - lots of solar panels in waroona, including puma service station

Post by **g4qber** » Sat, 12 Dec 2015, 18:36

I still think there's something wrong with Augusta n buss.
Users shouldn't need to fiddle with The connector.

Usual procedure is to press button to release from either the station or the car.
I believe The default setting of the switch is ON.
Pressing the button puts System in off mode.