The Regional Victorian city of Wangaratta officially has it’s first publicly accessible EV fast charger as of today.
Charging provider Evie Networks has made the announcement on their social media.
We’re excited to announce that, in partnership with the Rural City of Wangaratta, an Evie fast charger is now live on Docker Street in Wangaratta, VIC.
Located in the heart of the CBD, this new charger will play a critical role in facilitating travel to the region and make it easier for visitors to access local businesses, churches, theatres, and the Bullawah Cultural Trail.
Charging options (or in this instance, option), is an important strategic location, positioned along the Hume Freeway between Wodonga and Melbourne. This adds to other charging locations along the 350km stretch of road at Barnawartha, Euroa and Avenal. This means EV owners will now have more options to stop to recharge themselves and their cars.
This project was partly funded by the Victorian Government’s Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action through the ‘Destination Charging Across Victoria’ program.
The opening of a single EV charger may not necessarily be news at a normal site, however Wangaratta’s EV charger story has been a long time coming. The site was completed as far back as December 2022, but has not been active until today.
As we see from photos on the charging website Plugshare, the charger had a notice posted that indicated the reason it wasn’t yet available, was due to commissioning from energy provider Ausnet. For all the time, effort and money that went into creating a charging option at Wangaratta (hopefully more soon), the difficult questions should be asked of Ausnet to understand why a hold-up of 3 months took place here.
Australian EV adoption is taking off and we need a lot more charging options at a lot more locations, so let’s try and work on streamlining any processes to accelerate their rollout and commissioning.
With the 50kW DC charging site now open, those with CCS2 or CHAdeMO connectors can now take advantage of it. The cost will be $0.45c/kWh. To charge there, you’ll need to download the Evie mobile app and set a payment method before charging.
Visit the location at 2-6 Docker street, Wangaratta VIC 3677, Australia and consider checking in on Plugshare to let other drivers know its availability (something that should be solved at the network level).
