State funding for car charging stations

REGIONAL Victoria is set to receive more electric vehicle charging stations with grants now available to councils, businesses and community organisations to assist with their installation.

The State Government announced $5 million in funding for around 100 charging stations as part of the Destination Charging Across Victoria Program last month, with 80 per cent of the money to go to regional areas.

Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change Lily D’Ambrosio said expanding the charging station network would help meet the needs of the growing number of electric vehicle drivers on Victorian roads.

“This will make it easier for electric vehicle drivers to make the trips they need, knowing that there will be a charging station when they need, where they need,” she said.

But Ballarat EV owner and climate change advocate Pat Hockey said the money wasn’t enough to clear up congested charging stations around the city.

“If it was $5 million per year it might be for the next few years,” he said. “You’d need the same amount next year, again and again after that because it’s happening very quickly.”

“It’ll need to be commercial. They’ll need to have the same as a service station only for electricity, or service stations will have to have chargers.”

Mr Hockey noted the charging station next to Big W just off Curtis Street was particularly crowded.

“A year ago it virtually wasn’t getting used very much at all but over the course of the last 12 months people are buying electric cars very quickly, so we’ve gone from seeing no other cars there to at times there are four cars there waiting to use the chargers.

“Because of the nature of charging an electric car you typically would park the car and go and do some shopping, so then other people are turning up and there’s cars there without anyone in them and they’ve gone off for an unspecified amount of time to do their shopping.

“Some of the newer cars have very large batteries so they can take hours to charge and so quickly [chargers are] getting congested and becoming unworkable,” he said.