BP Pulse Network

[moa999]

This shows BP are more concerned with rollout speed rather than getting the network correct with the right software and equipment.

You've got to remember this is a global decision.

BP is not a small company and has operated EV charging networks in Europe for a number of years - in the UK (where it bought the Chargepoint in the UK and had its own Polar network) and Germany (where it has the Arul network, and a partnership with VW.)
If you look at various YT videos they've got direct experience with multiple machine types including ABB and Siemens

So I suspect the Tritium machines have been well benchmarked, both in price, availability, performance, uptime, maintainability etc.

 

[Hairyman]

Yes, I’ve seen a few other comparisons where the Tritium chargers are well regarded. It makes me wonder if the local issue is some problem with an overly conservative operating protocol, some other locally required but unreliable hardware component, or just plain poor maintenance.

 

[blubbernator]

Tritium chargers don't have the best reputation internationally, not just here. I have plenty of bad experiences with them myself. My home city Hamburg, Germany installed tons of 50kW Tritium chargers and only a few years later they are tearing them down again, replacing them with Siemens HPC chargers. This was also covered quite a bit by (local) media, and always blamed on poor design and no spare parts availability. DC was rarely ever working, if it did, with reduced speed, and i also had lots of issues with errors and aborted charging sessions.

 

[Vostok]

Tritium chargers don't have the best reputation internationally, not just here

I wonder how much of this is “the grass is always greener”? Bjørn Nyland jokes that ABB stands for “Always Be Broken” . Complaints about how broken third-party networks are in the USA are legendary. The two biggest are Electrify America (ABB, BTC Power, Efacec and Signet) and EVgo (ABB, Delta).

So has any DCFC manufacturer nailed it, really? Apart from Tesla SC of course

I’m sure they all have their pluses and minuses, annoyances and idiosyncrasies. This is, after all, a pretty new industry.

As to spare parts availability, that has been a global problem for just about every manufacturer over the past 3 years.

 

[[Zombie]]

I wonder how much of this is “the grass is always greener”?

For sure. The RACWA EV Highway (built in 2015) has had its fair share of reliability issues too, their chargers were all made by Circontrol (a Spanish manufacturer)

They have recently all been replaced with Tritium, which might actually be an improvement.

 

[aegidius]

Why are DC chargers so unreliable? Is it close-to-the-envelope design? Weather and operating conditions? It's not like we don't know how to make power electronics. Tesla seems to be able to do it.

 

[leonk]

I wonder if it's the basic design. Tesla superchargers seem to have very little smarts in each stand, they've basically a place to hang the cable. The cabinet with all the important bits is further away, with proper cooling and a bit less daily interaction.

By comparision the others seem to stuff everything in that single unit that cops abuse all the time.

 

[Chuq]

It could be a case of not just hardware that fails less, but hardware that is less susceptible to total failure if a component fails.

One example would be units that have multiple power units, shared between stalls, units can be dynamically allocated to different stalls and if one fails it's taken out of circulation. Notably Tesla and Kempower do this, but the PKM150 (that BP uses) also does this. Albeit in 25 kW blocks so a failed power unit at a 75 kW site would be noticeable, especially if both connectors are being used at once.

Having the units "fail open" if there is a comms issue is another way to increase reliability in the eyes of the user.

Think back to 5 years ago (or 10 years ago in Europe) where you rarely saw two fast chargers next to each other. With a single unit, I'm guessing it was probably the simplest and cost efficient way of doing it. When you have multiple stalls, the structure of sharing everything makes more sense. At least BP have gone with this format even if they only have one stall.

 

[Blue heaven]

For sure. The RACWA EV Highway (built in 2015) has had its fair share of reliability issues too, their chargers were all made by Circontrol (a Spanish manufacturer)

They have recently all been replaced with Tritium, which might actually be an improvement.

A definite improvement, the slimline Tritium Veefil looks so much nicer than the boxy Circontrol, this has a calming effect on the EV drivers anger when they realise It doesn’t work.

 

[Blue heaven]

I wonder if it's the basic design. Tesla superchargers seem to have very little smarts in each stand, they've basically a place to hang the cable. The cabinet with all the important bits is further away, with proper cooling and a bit less daily interaction.

By comparision the others seem to stuff everything in that single unit that cops abuse all the time.

A good chance you’re correct.

 

[Vostok]

Why are DC chargers so unreliable?

Well one would assume (hope?) that the various manufacturers know exactly why, and have or are taking steps to address the root causes.

Chargefox in one of its early “lessons learned” reports to ARENA said most failures were actually software related not hardware. And I’ve heard on the grapevine that Tritium has identified the root cause of its most significant hardware failures and that the issue has been fixed.

But, you know, time will tell.

 

[moa999]

I also wonder how much monitoring, preventive maintenance and obviously carrying spare parts has to do with it.

I've certainly seen Tesla techs working on superchargers reasonably regularly, even when they don't appear to be having issues (obviously having more stalls helps).

 

[Vostok]

I also wonder how much monitoring, preventive maintenance and obviously carrying spare parts has to do with it.

I think the availability of spare parts has been a huge contributor to poor reliability over the past 3 years, or at least the extended outage periods, but of course if hardware wasn’t failing in the first place then spare parts wouldn’t matter so much.

This article said Evie purchased 350 Trititum DCFCs in one go and warehoused them, and in another article (can’t find it) they said they had to cannibalise some of those for spare parts.

The CEO of a Major Australian EV Charging Network On Why Installing New Stations Is So Damned Difficult

We sat down with Chris Mills, the CEO of Evie, to discuss the future of electric vehicle charging infrastructure across Australia.

www.gizmodo.com.au

 

[cafz]

Why are DC chargers so unreliable?

It's harsh on the power electronics because they're cycled many times a day between a high power and zero power condition: this means thermal cycling which is just bad for components. You can engineer with this in mind but things will eventually fail anyway, so you have to plan for that. (Yes, even Superchargers - I noticed a couple of Supercharger stalls out-of-service on the maps this summer).

There's also software issues, communications issues, physical damage (eg. people jamming stuff into the connectors) and sensitivity to grid disturbances.

 

[scully]

Balgowlah on the app

 

[moa999]

Tweet from BP after the latest Tritium announcement
Great to be extending our partnership with Aussie company @TritiumCharging . This partnership will help us achieve our ambition to build around 600 charge points across Australia, including 50 this year.

So possibly suggests the rollout target has already been pulled back (from 100 at end Q1 per the videos above)

For the comments

https://twitter.com/x/status/1615849099269668864

 

[Hairyman]

Free and frank feedback there

 

[scully]

So, all the Tritium issues are well known, and they keep getting great sales. Do they just have great sales people, or are there some brown paper bags involved

 

[Hairyman]

So, all the Tritium issues are well known, and they keep getting great sales. Do they just have great sales people, or are there some brown paper bags involved

It may be that they are the best of a poor set of options

 

[moa999]

It may be that they are the best of a poor set of options

And as described above the folks at BP UK/Europe who presumably made this decision have access to way more other brands and data than we see locally.