Finally, the coal barons have discovered how to extract revenue from free fuel…

Sun-Powered EVs, Coal-Priced Bills: Queensland’s Solar Irony

The dream of powering electric vehicles (EVs) from the Queensland sun has hit an unexpected roadblock. Energex and Ergon’s EV charger rules leave Queenslanders on single-phase supplies feeling utterly dismayed. Instead of tapping into their remarkable solar resource, Queenslanders are finding that they can only have a 7kW EV charger at home if they are willing to pay coal-fired prices for electricity. It’s nuts.

Legacy Thinking For Legacy Systems

When you go hunting for a reason behind the rule, it leads you to the Queensland Electricity Connection Manual and, more specifically, section 4, which talks about Balancing of Load and Limitation on Equipment, which I’ll paraphrase here :

4.1 General
The load of an installation… shall be so balanced… that the current in any phase does not exceed the current in any other phase by more than 20 A

This is why a single-phase customer in Queensland can’t have an EV charger connected to an “anytime” tariff unless it’s limited to 4.6kW or 20 amps. If you want the full 7.3kW, which decent, single-phase EV chargers are capable of, Queensland insists that it must be supplied from an economy tariff limited to either 8 hours or 18 hours per day. The reason is simple: the networks realise that EV charging could potentially overwhelm the system, and they want some control of it, even if that (ripple control) is so crude it makes the lights flicker.

Why Are Queenslanders Ropeable?

Picture this: You’ve got solar panels gleaming under the Queensland sun, yet you can’t harness that free energy to charge your EV. It is almost as if the sun is shining, but the lightbulbs in your house stubbornly refuse to light up. The power generated from your solar panels travels out to the grid, only to be immediately resold back to you at off-peak rates. Talk about money for nothing for the incumbent industry.

The Frustration Fuelling Consumer Rage

This ham-fisted approach ignores the white-hot rage a badly explained rule creates with consumers who can’t use their own solar power as they please. People are already disgruntled about what they perceive as the thieving bastards who don’t pay a decent feed-in tariff, even if you can explain that daytime solar electricity is often in surplus and worthless on the spot market.

The general principle that you are forced pay for the power you just generated is enough to make people spend economically irrational sums of money to “go off-grid” and disconnect from the system. (if they can afford the capital cost) I’ve seen it time and time again over the last 15 years.

Electric cars and V2G will only make this more viable in the future. The technologies are already available. When the economic stars align with cheap daytime charging at work, charging your EV during the day and shipping electricity home to run the air conditioning will be feasible. When driving, your house can have a modest solar and battery to keep the fridge and lights on.

Sidebar: I have built an off grid power system that replaced a very basic version of this idea. The bloke owned two truck batteries, one ran his camping fridge, TV and lights. The other sat on the passenger floor of his Mitsubishi Sigma with a couple of alligator clips to charge it from the car alternator while he commuted a couple hours each day. Arriving home with a full battery, he just swapped them over. It was equal parts genius and dangerous, both horribly basic and elegantly simple.

Face it, you weren’t thinking of this technological marvel when I said off grid EV battery swap were you?

What’s More Irrational Than A Jilted Customer?

Queensland network engineers appear to be ignoring the answer that’s already here.

Active solar harvesting, dynamic system control, smart charging, demand response, the Internet of Things are all names for the same approach to managing and using energy efficiently. And they are already being rolled out in South Australia by SA Power Networks.

Even more ludicrous is that Queensland had extensive industry consultation on dynamic solar control, and then ignored the reality and went for a dumb, short-term solution.

The Alternative Is Civil Disobedience

While I could never recommend something the DNSP disapproves of, I have seen contactors installed to swap your hard-wired appliance from controlled load to anytime tariff using a ‘sunshine circuit.‘ This can automatically add solar energy to your hot water and default back to off peak otherwise. If the authorities complain, just forgo the off peak supply altogether and use a timer that follows cheap time of use rates.

How does a sunshine circuit work though? Using some smarts in your solar inverter, or an even smarter Catch Power Relay, you can trigger a contactor to turn things on, like a pool pump, hot water service or EV charger, when the sun is strong and the exports are high. A slightly crude way to divert electricity compared to proper variable dynamic control, but it’s cheaper energy storage than a battery.

Self consumption via a sunshine circuit makes a lot of sense if you get work done on your switchboard to accommodate some new equipment, so it’s worth considering if you have an electrician quoting for a new EV charger, because it offers some easy and simple savings.

The Implications of EVs for Power Networks

Some in the media insist “consumers can install the chargers they want, and use them when they want.” but in reality, that’s plain wrong. As I have outlined before, building a network and generating capacity to handle all the cars all the time with all the air con and all the cooking at 6 pm will be incredibly expensive and inefficient.

EVs are a big part of the answer, but your network will have to manage them better than Queensland.

SA has the right idea, already approving bi-directioonal chargers and using OCPP 1.6j to control EV charging, not dumb off peak switching.

Queensland, Embrace the Future, Don’t Fight It

Charging EVs with solar power should be the norm, not an uphill battle. It’s time for Queensland to ditch the dumb, easy option and invest in efficient, dynamic solar control technologies. Because when it comes to Australia’s energy future, the Sunshine State should be leading, not lagging.

So, Queensland, how about we turn the page on this solar irony?

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• Source: https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/queenslanders-solar-power-evs/