Tesla owners wanted for DC fast charger launch

[AndrewUQ]

Hi everyone,

I'm the Manager of Energy & Sustainability at the University of Queensland.

I'm excited to announce that UQ has just installed 2x Tritium Veefill 80A DC fast charging stations - one at the St Lucia campus and one at the Gatton campus. The Gatton campus charger is the first inter-city fast charger in Queensland. These chargers are available 24x7 to all members of the public and will be free to use for the foreseeable future. Should you not have a CHAdeMO adaptor, we have also installed 32A single phase Tesla Destination Chargers alongside these at both sites. We will be upgrading these to the three phase unit when available from Tesla. You can find the exact location of both chargers on Plugshare.

The stations had a soft launch this week, with an official launch event scheduled for 1pm on Thursday 7th April at the St Lucia campus. A number of VIPs will be attending and we're expecting a fair degree of media interest. We'd love to have some passionate Tesla owners come along and join EV owners of other brands for the launch event. As well as the Model S, I'm particularly interested in the possibility of having a Tesla Roadster on display as well.

We are working with some space limitations so numbers are somewhat limited and RSVP is essential. If you're available and keen to participate, please send me an email via [email protected] with some info about yourself and your vehicle and we can go from there!

Thanks,

Andrew.

 

[meloccom]

Hi Andrew,
Are the Vefill stations equipped with Chademo and CCS2 plugs or something else?
If you're allowed to say, can you tell us how much a Vfill charger costs?
Good luck with your event.

 

[AndrewUQ]

Hi Andrew,
Are the Vefill stations equipped with Chademo and CCS2 plugs or something else?
If you're allowed to say, can you tell us how much a Vfill charger costs?
Good luck with your event.

The Veefill units have have CHAdeMO & SAE CCS options (the two cables you can see).

Shoot me an email and I can give you some more info on costs if you like.

 

[Mark E]

Fantastic initiative. If I was in Brisbane I'd attend.

 

[LGGD]

Unfortunately I can't make it to the launch (I'd love to have been able too) but I'd like to say a big, big, big thank you. The Gatton location especially is absolutely fantastic and makes trips and stays in Toowoomba really easy now. The locations look great and the addition of destination chargers is a great idea - very well thought out. Thanks again.

 

[LGGD]

Andrew, the PlugShare entry for the Gatton location mentions that a parking permit is required to use the charger. Can you clarify on how we get access to the charger please.

 

[Dougo]

Great news Andrew. Thanks to you and UQ for the support of EV future.

 

[AndrewUQ]

Andrew, the PlugShare entry for the Gatton location mentions that a parking permit is required to use the charger. Can you clarify on how we get access to the charger please.

That's odd. I could have made a mistake when entering that. It's definitely free to use and no parking permit required for either station.

The St Lucia station will be limited to 30 minutes of use though and only available to those cars who are currently charging (so it isn't abused as a 'free' park on campus). Signage about this will go up soon.

 

[Candleflame]

i have had my eye on the QLD fast charger project for a while since i might be going there soon. Great to see something came out of it.

 

[Dylanpete]

Superb news Andrew! I was informed through AEVA Brisbane branch and already confirmed through them I'll attend.
I'll send you an email.

 

[Dborn]

Wonderful initiative, Andrew. Wish I could attend, but it is alittle far from Sydney!

 

[ICUDoc]

Great work, Andrew- congratulations and thanks to you and your department!

 

[timpoo]

Great work Andrew and congrats to UQ and Tritium!!

 

[Dougo]

Congratulations Andrew. The event was well organised, and much appreciated by myself and fellow Tesla owners. Great to see the Queensland government through Mark Bailey supporting both EV's and solar. The fact that Tesla has 325,000 reservations for M3 says volumes about the massive potential take up of electric vehicles when the price comes down.
Thanks again University of Queensland who lead the way in sustainable living for the future!

 

[garyjac]

Used this station today, and if I had a criticism it would only be that they should have the Tesla HPWC running at a much higher amperage -- currently 16 Amps only (~3.8 kW)

 

[Zoltrix77]

Does the Veefil station have CCS Type 1 or Type 2?

 

[AndrewUQ]

A huge thank you to all the Tesla owners who came along and participated in Thursday's launch event! It was a great turnout and strong showing from the whole EV community. The Minister for Energy was very enthusiastic and had a lot of positive things to say about the future of EVs in QLD. We really hope that with UQ taking this first step, others will now follow and fast charge infrastructure will begin to pop up everywhere.

Importantly also, the launch event attracted significant media attention. We were covered on TV by Ch10 QLD News and ABC QLD News (with national coverage on News 24 the next day). ABC 612 Brisbane also did an extended story, plus we got a write up quite a few places online. Some links to coverage are below:

Ch10 story: http://tenplay.com.au/news/brisbane/2016/4/7/battery-boost

ABC 612 story: Solar powered electric vehicle chargers at campuses in Brisbane and Gatton. Andrew Wilson Mgr of Energy and Sustainability at UQ

Brisbane Times/SMH: Electric vehicle charging stations roll out at UQ campuses

ABC News Online: Queensland's first solar-powered electric car chargers free for public use

Gizmodo: Queensland University Installs Free Solar-Powered Electric Car Chargers

RenewEconomy: Tritium EV fast chargers installed at University of Qld, powered by solar

I don't have an online copy of the ABC News TV story unfortunately.

UQ has also produced the following video to help promote the chargers:

A few photos below, including my personal favorite shot of Minister Bailey taking a shot of a P90D for his personal collection! I don't have any photos of the big line up of EVs we had unfortunately, so hoping that someone else took a few snaps.

Regarding the amperage of the Tesla Destination Charger - as a few people have noted, both St Lucia and Gatton are currently restricted to 16A. This is due to an issue whereby a 3-phase 32A breaker was installed ready for Tesla to supply us with a 3-phase charger. They've supplied us with single-phase units in the interim but their advice is not to run it at 32A single-phase without a 40A breaker. As such the next setting down is 16A unfortunately. This should be resolved upon delivery of the 3-phase units from Tesla.

Zoltrix - I'm unsure what kind of CSS connector is on the Tritium unit as I didn't know there was multiple- it's the combo type connector compatible with the BMW i3.

 

[meloccom]

Zoltrix - I'm unsure what kind of CSS connector is on the Tritium unit as I didn't know there was multiple- it's the combo type connector compatible with the BMW i3.

Combined Charging System (CCS) comes in 2 flavours, for CCS1 the top round part of the CCS is based on the J1772 standard of charging whilst the CCS2 that part is more like the Mennekes or IEC62196 used on the Model S.
From the look of the pictures it appears to be Type 2, particularly given that it was being used with a BMW i3.
From my understanding most manufacturers of vehicles and charging equipment are moving away from CCS1 now that the IEC have given the nod to CCS2.

 

[cwerdna]

Combined Charging System (CCS) comes in 2 flavours, for CCS1 the top round part of the CCS is based on the J1772 standard of charging whilst the CCS2 that part is more like the Mennekes or IEC62196 used on the Model S.
From the look of the pictures it appears to be Type 2, particularly given that it was being used with a BMW i3.
From my understanding most manufacturers of vehicles and charging equipment are moving away from CCS1 now that the IEC have given the nod to CCS2.

I'm more than 90% sure that BMW has had to support 3 types for the i3, depending on where it was sold: Combo1, Combo2 and CHAdeMO (pics at Chevy Spark EV Forum • View topic - DC fast charging: J1772 CCS vs CHAdeMO vs Supercharger, etc.).

Combo1 is for North America and most certainly, EVERY vehicle that can have J1772 CCS aka SAE Combo here has Combo1 (e.g. i3, Spark EV and e-Golf). We don't have Mennekes Type 2 plugs in the US.

Combo2 would be for Europe and _____?

BMW puts in CHAdeMO for Japanese market i3s.

The Chargepoint-branded version of Tritium's dual-head DC FC (Tritium and ChargePoint Partner for Fast Charging Across the U.S.) has CHAdeMO and Combo1, which makes sense given there are no Combo2 cars here. Page at ChargePoint Express 200 - ChargePoint and installation guide at Data Sheets & Support Guides - ChargePoint refers to CCS1.

Gotta love how CCS has 2 different plugs depending on where in the world it is, vs. the (single) world-standard CHAdeMO.

edit: From Tritium » Specifications and Tritium » Veefil is very easy to use, they can supply units either either type of CCS.

 

[LGGD]

There has been issues with Teslas using the CHAdeMO at Gatton - it hasn't worked for a Tesla. Any news on if this has been resolved yet?