Inner West Council (IWC) in Sydney has lodged grant applications with the NSW government, which if successful will fund the installation of a minimum of 45 kerbside and carpark electric vehicle (EV) charging stations across the council area by June 2026.
The results of Inner West Council’s application will be determined by early 2024. If successful, community consultation will commence immediately.
Coincidentally a large part of IWC covers the area represented in national parliament by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, whose government has implemented a number of EV friendly policies such as novated lease FBT free tax benefits for quite a few EV purchases.
Meanwhile the people who live in the PM’s electorate hardly have any options to publicly charge their new electric cars.
I was informed by someone familiar with the demographics of the area that a huge two thirds of households in IWC can’t charge at home. For context the IWC estimated resident population for 2022 is 183,105.
EV Public Charging is scarce in IWC
Inner West Council lags far behind faster moving nearby councils like Canterbury Bankstown, City of Sydney and a large number of coastal Sydney councils which have already got quite a few DC fast charger locations as well as extensive trials of kerbside street chargers.
So far the main provider of public open access electric car chargers in the IWC area is EVIE Networks which has independently negotiated access to shopping centre locations such as Marrickville Metro and IKEA Tempe (pictured above) where I recently tested the MG4 Essence 64 charging curve).
A small step towards what is needed
Many Australian media and government staff assume that the majority of electric car owners are able to charge at home.
In the more inner city parts of Australia such as IWC that is not true, thousands of people without a home driveway or garage will need public EV chargers regularly and a scattering of slow 7kW or 11kW slow chargers won’t be enough.
While this IWC grant application news is good by itself, it shows a lack of understanding by IWC of the number of public EV chargers which will be required in the area long before 2026 (2.5 years from now).
Grant Application details
An IWC spokesperson said that the grant application aims to encourage resident EV adoption and significantly reduce the carbon footprint of the Inner West LGA.
The spokesperson explained that council plans to partner with Ausgrid and successful business applicants to the NSW grant program for clean energy providers, to implement and install these charging stations.
This implies that at least two charging networks (hopefully more) out of the main players like JOLT, Evie, BP Pulse, EVX, Chargefox etc worked with IWC to submit the grant applications.
As part of this grant application, Inner West Council has moved to repurpose their Balmain Depot into an electric charging station hub.
This will be welcomed by residents in that area as there are currently no public EV chargers on the Balmain peninsula or even anywhere North of the City West Link motorway.
What do you think … Is your local Australian council / shire government working fast enough to roll out public charging infrastructure?
Yes this is a particularly bad problem in the Inner West. Bow Charging is looking to solve this by connecting EV drivers with no home charging option to solar homes for a cheap and clean charge. I’m currently recruiting testing candidates, visit: http://www.bowcharging.com