Superchargers in Australia

[Quickst]

Coal in this country is used for one thing: making electricity.

Yes and it's still a major contributor

Almost 40% of Australia's energy is from renewable sources

And the other 60%?.

There are only certain places on certain days where one can guarantee supercharging is 100% renewable - mainly at 12 midday in South Australia or in the case of Tasmania most of the time. (Or with household solar).

 

[elddum]

What do you think excuses or justifies sending that email now instead of 10 days ago?

The fact that Tesla Australia had no idea and no information on what happened either!

Having worked for US tech companies for decades, that’s how it rolls. If everyone knew what was happening beforehand it would be leaked and that would cause worse labour and financial problems. I don’t like it, as an employee or an owner, but I get why the delay.

I feel for the Tesla AU team having to try to explain to suppliers, contractors and customers when they don’t even know themselves. Have been through that many times myself!

Do I agree with the decision? How could I possibly have all the info to know that- only time will tell.

I wholeheartedly agree other manufacturers need to step up!

 

[Nevyn72]

Coal in this country is used for one thing: making electricity.

Actually quite a bit of it is also used to make steel...

 

[Max Spaghetti]

Actually quite a bit of it is also used to make steel...

Haha, after I posted I thought someone would bring that up. Yes, it is also used to make steel!

 

[coref1]

Yes and it's still a major contributor

View attachment 1046137


And the other 60%?.

There are only certain places on certain days where one can guarantee supercharging is 100% renewable - mainly at 12 midday in South Australia or in the case of Tasmania most of the time. (Or with household solar).

We're in the transition phase and heading towards 100% renewable. It is not correct to suggest none of the electricity from a DC fast charger is from renewable sources.

 

[Max Spaghetti]

It is not correct to suggest none of the electricity from a DC fast charger is from renewable sources.

Nobody did. I merely pointed out that a coal baron investing in DCFC stations is not ironic - if anything TSB was investing in something that would actually add to the demand for electricity, which is what a lot of the coal is dug up to produce. I'm not saying that was his motivation though - he may actually be altruistic.

 

[doggy1]

I thought all Supercharger electricity was renewable and that this was also the case with a number of other DCFC operators.

From Tesla: "100% Renewable. With more than 45,000 Superchargers, we own and operate the largest global, fast charging network in the world. Our global network had 99.95% uptime and was 100% renewable in 2022, achieved through a combination of onsite resources and annual renewable matching."

So not that every electron comes directly from a renewable source but that the wholesale agreements add up to 100% renewable.

 

[doggy1]

Here is the NRMA policy:
"For every unit of power used in our electric vehicle fast charging network, the equivalent amount of renewable energy is fed directly into the electricity grid. We do this by buying 100% GreenPower which is energy sourced from wind, solar, bioenergy and mini-hydro generators that produce zero net greenhouse gases. For more information, please visit the GreenPower website."

 

[Max Spaghetti]

renewable

It's a bit hard to tell the renewable-sourced electrons apart from the coal-sourced electrons when they are all flowing together down a wire. Especially during times of day/night when there simply aren't many renewable electrons in the wire.

When you Supercharge during a non-windy night in Victoria, you are probably using 95% coal and 5% hydro. Tesla paying the electricity company for "renewable electricity" doesn't make the electricity renewable, it merely affects the flow of money in the wholesale market (which, granted, has the potential to encourage further investment in renewable energy).

 

[EcoCloudIT]

Almost 40% of Australia's energy is from renewable sources according to the Clean Energy Council.

In the case of my house, 94% from is from renewable sources (roof top solar/home battery)....the remaining 6% sources from the grid is bought from renewable sourced electricity.

 

[Vostok]

Except that DCFC stations are not a "non-fossil fuel technology". Coal in this country is used for one thing: making electricity. That's the stuff that DCFC stations use.

As others have pointed out, all the major DCFC network providers pay for 100% renewable electricity or offset the emissions. The fact that electrons are fungible means that every dollar of electricity they buy goes to a renewable generator, hence is a dollar that is NOT going to a coal or gas generator.

As you note “it affects the flow of money in the wholesale market” which is exactly the point. It improves the return for renewable generators and makes fossil generators increasingly unviable and ultimately puts them out of business.

The other important aspect is the current coal mix is not permanent. It is changing rapidly. Coal will likely become a minority generation source of electricity in this country late next year or the year after. Then hopefully most of the “EVs are coal powered” rhetoric will disappear, because coal will finally be a minority source. A very powerful comeback to anyone who wants to bring that up.

(In 1999, coal generated 95.8% of Australia’s electricity. Last year, it generated 54.0%)

 

[Vostok]

The fact that Tesla Australia had no idea and no information on what happened either!

It’s inexcusable that no-one knew what was going on after the announcement was made. A comms plan, if one had actually been developed (and clearly there wasn’t one) would have put everyone (employees, customers, partners, the public) on an equal footing with the same information.

No need for speculation, guessing-games, “let’s wait for the dust to settle” and 20 pages of thread discussion. That’s what a competent business that conducts itself responsibly would do.

If everyone knew what was happening beforehand it would be leaked and that would cause worse labour and financial problems.

Decisions of this magnitude should be managed by a trusted ringfenced team that works out everything prior - the comms plan, the transition plan, the restructure details, timelines, media Q&A… everything. All ready to go as soon as the announcement is made. It’s never the case that “everyone” knows prior because clearly that would leak and not allow a ringfenced team to do its job properly.

I have been involved in many such ringfenced teams and they work very well and surprisingly few have leaked anything. That’s because executive management should know who and who not to put on such teams and who can be trusted.

If Elon has created a culture in Tesla where trust is absent and this type of team could not be created because everything would leak, then that’s an even more damning indictment on Elon as a CEO. Culture starts at the top.

 

[elddum]

That’s what a competent business that conducts itself responsibly would do.

So clearly Microsoft, IBM, SAP, Cisco... and many, many others are not competent businesses? That is exactly the model they have deployed many, many times with layoffs. Sure, they don't have an egotistical CEO that blasts it out on social media first... but the underlying process (and results) are the same. The only thing may be the delay in the message getting to the public.

If Elon has created a culture in Tesla where trust is absent

How many times do you see tech leaks from Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, Samsung, and the list goes on... it isn't that there is always an inherent absence of trust in the culture of the company, it is a societal challenge that everyone wants to get their 5sec of fame, and be the first to announce something - even if its not a guaranteed certainty or even the truth.

Like I said, I don't particularly like it... but life is not always how we want it. Holding Tesla to some sort of higher standard than others just doesn't make sense, or seem reasonable.

 

[Jules22]

How many times do you see tech leaks from Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, Samsung, and the list goes on... it isn't that there is always an inherent absence of trust in the culture of the company, it is a societal challenge that everyone wants to get their 5sec of fame, and be the first to announce something - even if its not a guaranteed certainty or even the truth.

Correct, with Tesla you have the added problem of organisations with political or financial agendas such as Reuters who have no regard for factual information but would be seeking out every ex-employee and offering incentives to get any hint of dirt that they can misrepresent and amplify.

 

[Vostok]

So clearly Microsoft, IBM, SAP, Cisco... and many, many others are not competent businesses? That is exactly the model they have deployed many, many times with layoffs.

They are competent, because in all the instances I know of, those business have rolled out an internal and external comms plan and had media Q&A ready to go when such announcements have been made.

Can you name any specific instances where they have not done that?

 

[elddum]

They are competent, because in all the instances I know of, those business have rolled out an internal and external comms plan and had media Q&A ready to go when such announcements have been made.

Can you name any specific instances where they have not done that?

Yes I can!
but as an employee in those circumstances I am unable to provide details (because I actually respect the confidentiality clauses in my employment contracts).
Just take a look in the IT press over the last few years

 

[Quickst]

It is not correct to suggest none of the electricity from a DC fast charger is from renewable sources.

Not correct to suggest they are.

So not that every electron comes directly from a renewable source but that the wholesale agreements add up to 100% renewable.

Even if fungible,it matters little because the electrons coming out of the CCS2 plug are only partly renewable ( unless at the edge cases stated above)

That 100% renewable will eventually occur - like FSD (unsupervised) but until then I'm not going to delude myself that just by paying for 100% renewable that I'm getting 100% renewable

 

[coref1]

Not correct to suggest they are.

This is what I said. "Almost 40% of Australia's energy is from renewable sources according to the Clean Energy Council."
Forgive me if you interpreted that as meaning I was suggesting 100%.

 

[PC__LoadLetter]

This is what I said. "Almost 40% of Australia's energy is from renewable sources according to the Clean Energy Council."
Forgive me if you interpreted that as meaning I was suggesting 100%.

The charging network operators all suggest 100%, despite it being impossible to control where the electrons come from in almost every current use case. Well, maybe excluding those NRMA ones in the outback if someone siphoned out the fuel in the generator.

https://www.tesla.com/en_au/impact/product

With more than 45,000 Superchargers, we own and operate the largest global, fast charging network in the world. Our global network had 99.95% uptime and was 100% renewable in 2022, achieved through a combination of onsite resources and annual renewable matching.

https://evie.com.au/about-evie/

Evie Networks is Australia’s leading electric vehicle DC fast charging network. We are an infrastructure company that owns and operates our network, enabling us to provide reliable, fast chargers powered by 100% renewable energy.

https://ampcharge.ampol.com.au/FAQs Details?Category=specifications

We're installing solar panels and solar batteries at some service stations and to help power our retail stores and AmpCharge chargers. Where there is an excess of renewable power, the energy will be fed back into the electricity grid. In situations where solar panels or solar batteries don't cover all energy requirements, our AmpCharge chargers will be supplied by renewable energy through the purchase of Large-scale Generation Certificates (LGCs) to net the equivalent electricity consumption to 100%.

 

[cafz]

Can we please stop talking about "renewable electrons" and "non-renewable electrons" as if it means anything? The electrons in the wire actually travel only at around walking pace - and even better, electrons don't move from one side of a transformer to the other - so none of those electrons flowing through your plug started at any kind of generator at all. (And of course the power transmission is almost all AC so the average drift velocity of the electrons is zero!).

What actually moves - and matters - is energy, transmitted through electric fields set up around the wires and electro-magnetic fields within the transformers, measured in Joules or kWh.

When you are standing at a DCFC asking "if I put 1kWh of energy into my car, where will the energy come from?", the only sensible answer to that is that it is equivalent to asking "if there is 1kWh more load on the power system at this precise location and this precise time, where will it be supplied from?". In the market-based system that exists in the eastern states and SA, that's asking which generator would be given a higher dispatch target with that additional load, which comes out to be the generator that's currently sitting at the top of the bid stack. It's not necessarily even in the same region - if interconnector and other constraining limits aren't binding, your charging in Shepparton could be increasing the output of a hydro generator in Tasmania.