Bell Hub charging network

Discussion about EV/Battery charging infrastructure, Electric highways etc.
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Chuq
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Bell Hub charging network

Post by Chuq »

Saw this in the AFR - one to keep an eye on.

Here's their website: https://bellhub.com/ - but not a lot of detail about locations.

https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/start-u ... 615-p5812f
Start-up to build EV charging network
At a time when big business is accused of greenwashing, a Sydney-based company is planning on turning a network of car wash sites into the country’s second-largest electric vehicle charging network.
Jun 15, 2021 – 12.29pm

A start-up that plans to convert a network of car wash outlets into a national electric vehicle charging station business says it can undercut Tesla’s EV charging rate by about 80 per cent.
Bell Resources, which has no relationship to the company stripped of all its cash by Alan Bond in the 1990s, says it can sell energy to EV owners at a cost price of 10¢ a kilowatt because of the combination of rooftop solar, car wash revenues and the draw down of off-peak battery stored energy.
Chief executive Mark Avery says this charging price compares well with the rate charged at Tesla charging stations of 52¢/kW.
Electric vehicles made by Audi, Mercedes, Porsche, Tesla, Lucid and Rimac have 350kW+ charging capability and can be fully charged in less than 10 minutes.
Avery says Bell Resources has acquired 63 car wash businesses (and seven freehold car wash properties and three greenfields sites) across Victoria, ACT, NSW, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia under option deeds.
It plans to install ultra-fast direct current (DC) charging stations made by Swedish company ABB at its car wash sites and rebrand them as the “Bell Hub” brand.
A 350kW DC fast charger can add about 30 kilometres on range to an EV in one minute.
The Bell Resources move is significant because it involves building resilient infrastructure that will help remove the “range anxiety” that many believe is holding back the uptake of EVs in Australia.
A report prepared for Bell Resources by consultancy Frost & Sullivan says there are now five charging networks in Australia: Chargefox, which has about 500 public chargers in operation, including 20 ultra-rapid charging stations; the City of Adelaide, which has 40 chargers; NRMA, which has 39 chargers; Tesla, which has 36; and the RAC Western Australia, which has 11 chargers.
Chargefox’s ultra-rapid stations have up to four 350kW ultra-rapid and two 50kW fast chargers each. The company manages the Queensland Electric Super Highway, a network of 31 fast charging sites in the state.
Emerging competitors include Evie Networks, which is building a charging network comprised of 80 ultra-fast charging stations at 42 locations to connect the main Australian cities.
Frost & Sullivan says it will be using California-based EV Connect’s cloud-based software platform to manage its network.
Chinese fast-charging start-up XCharge is looking to set up a network with at least 1000 DC fast chargers in Australia and is collaborating with Southern Sustainable Electric Australia, according to Frost & Sullivan.
Avery says car wash sites are ideal for EV charging because they are built for high volume vehicle movement, have no site contamination issues and are exempt from having to obtain EV development approval in most states.
More importantly, car wash sites do not face the combustion safeguard rules that affect petrol stations. Under Australian standards, an EV charging station must be at least 12 metres from a fuel bowser or fuel vent pipe.
Avery is not concerned about the federal government’s lack of strong support for EVs because state governments are taking the lead.
He says public charging stations will be integral to EV adoption in Australia given about 14 per cent of dwellings are apartments, units or townhouses and about a third of Australians live in rental accommodation.
Another factor in favour of EV adoption is that 2.3 million trading businesses will look to expense the cost of running an EV.
A presentation for potential investors in Bell Resources says the company would have made a net profit before tax of $9.79 million in the year to June 2020. It forecasts revenue will rise from $37 million in 2020 to $100 million in 2023.
The document says gross profit from charging EVs would be 70 to 80 per cent, and gross profit from car washes 30 to 35 per cent.
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Re: Bell Hub charging network

Post by philupandgo »

Hmm. It would have been nice if the numbers in the last sentence added up to 100%.
At the moment they are a bit like Linga, a big splashy promise, and then...

Of the 73 sites that they bought, 55 are planned to include EV charging:
QLD – 8 Metro, 4 Regional
NSW – 8 Metro, 9 Regional
ACT – 3
VIC – 6 Metro, 6 Regional
SA – 4 Metro, 2 Regional
WA – 2 Metro, 3 Regional
Particularly the regional sites, together with Evie, will provide much needed redundancy for non-Teslas.

I wonder if this is the first fruits from the Future Fuels Fund.
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Re: Bell Hub charging network

Post by brendon_m »

Sure they could sell the power at 10¢ a kWh vs Teslas 52¢ but why would they? And I doubt they could pay for those big shiny chargers any time soon at such a low rate.
$37million claimed possible revenue for 2020, 80% of which comes from charging. (And $100million by 2023)
That's $29.6 million from charging
At 10¢/kWh is 296,000,000kWh. Spread across 63 sites is 4,698,413kWh per location. That works out to 12,872 kWh of energy charged per day. Say 50kWh into each car on average is 257 EVs charged per site per day.
Maybe in the future, sure but not for a while and certainly not 3 times that by 2023. How many EVs are currently in Australia? Google says around 20000. That's 3/4 of EVs doing a fast charge every single day... These numbers don't really add up well.
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Re: Bell Hub charging network

Post by Nagaman »

Charge while you wash ?
Hmmm……..maybe not.
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Chuq
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Re: Bell Hub charging network

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A bit more detail, thanks to an article from TheDriven - https://thedriven.io/2021/06/16/ex-libe ... -stations/

The idea appears to be unravelling a bit...
Avery said the car washes were mostly small operators, but would be brought under the uniform “Bell Hub” branding, and upgraded to resemble petrol stations, complete with “barista coffee” facilities and boards out the front advertising the going rate by the kilowatt.

The self-serve car wash facilities – which he said were often highly profitable – would remain there, though customers would not be able to charge and wash their car simultaneously.

Avery said the batteries would allow the company to set dynamic pricing, meaning at certain times – when the battery is well charged but demand is low – the cost per kilowatt could fall as low as 10 cents.
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Re: Bell Hub charging network

Post by philupandgo »

So the price is only 10c when the battery is full in the middle of a sunny day, or almost never. Otherwise the price is probably a more normal 50c, which is reasonable for the convenience of rapid charging.
Brendon's estimation of 3/4 of all EVs visiting every day becomes, a little more reasonable, 3/20, or everyone once per week. And in a few years, todays 20,000 EVs will likely be 100,000, so we each need to visit one of their sites once per month. The numbers are becoming a little bit more possible.
If they can carry their enthusiasm for a couple more years and build out the infrastructure, then it will exist even if the company is struggling to make it pay. Their first tweet was early last year suggesting it would all be happening by the end of 2020; but then something happened, and so we can understand the delay. Bring it on.
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Re: Bell Hub charging network

Post by brendon_m »

They definitely have a business case and in the long term (5 to 10 years) it'll probably become reasonably profitable. I'm just skeptical of the fluffed up numbers for the short term

On the plus side if they can make a viable economic case then we can rely less on our fearless leaders to help with EV uptake.
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