Off-grid power company Apex Energy have announced a solar-powered electric vehicle charging station at their Adelaide based headquarters, completely free for public use on the weekends.
The only catch? It’s only free when there’s solar power available.
“There’s lots of businesses that have big solar arrays, and many are empty on the weekends,” Apex Energy project manager Sean LePoidevin told TheDriven.
“That power is just going into the grid getting anywhere from zero to five cents a kilowatt hour – almost nothing. It’s a minimal expense on the business’s side to offer it to the public.”
The technology used to do this is a Fronius solar inverter and Wattpilot with an energy meter. This tracks in real time how much energy is going into the PV, how much energy is being given to the grid and how much is being used by charging electric vehicle. You can see this on their public monitor here.
According to the Apex team, this is the first time this type of zero emissions charger has been provided to the community for free.
“We’re incredibly proud to be the first to introduce this EV charging facility, which is an example Apex Energy’s motivation to support renewable energy solutions,” said Paul Stallan, owner of Apex Energy Australia.
“By offering free, solar-powered charging, we’re not just supporting the community of EV owners but also demonstrating a viable, sustainable practice that we hope will inspire other businesses with unused solar generation to consider and make practical use of low-cost energy sources.”
The charger is a 22kW three phase AC charger, but the speeds are adapted in real time to the amount of solar generated from the 30 kWp roof-mounted PV system.
This means that the company isn’t paying for the energy provided to the public and the energy provided is definitely carbon-free. But it does mean no charging in a downpour.
“When the sun goes down or it’s super cloudy the charger will stop – it’ll go to zero watts into your car. For employees, we have a little key tag where we can scan the charger to activate it outside of solar hours,” said LePoidevin.
“But the preference is to certainly charge from PV.”
The team are only offering it on weekends and public holidays at this stage, as the team also charge their electric fleet cars in that location, and the car park is normally full.
The charger has been up on PlugShare since October, and the site has already received a few check ins.
“There’s no gates, there’s no keys or anything. People can just drive in and charge up. I can see on the solar monitoring system that on both Saturday and Sunday, someone plugged in their cars and got some free power,” LePoidevin told TheDriven.
“We just want people to use it really. It’s there for everybody.”