The government’s clean energy investment agency has taken a $3.5 million stake in Australian company Jet Charge to help it roll out charging stations aimed at lowering power costs for electric vehicle owners.
Jet Charge plans to lease out the advanced charging stations, which use internet-connected technology managed by the company to deliver power at off-peak times.
Clean Energy Finance Corp chief executive Ian Learmonth said initiatives such as Jet Charge were at the “heart of our clean energy transition”.
“With more Australians putting solar [panels] on our rooftops and with an increasingly cleaner electricity system, we can power our electric vehicles with clean energy made even more efficient with smart charging infrastructure such as that created by Jet Charge,” he said.
The national energy grid sourced about 77 per cent of its power from fossil fuels in the past year, 18 per cent from large-scale wind and solar, and 5 per cent from rooftop solar.
Experts say electric vehicles and their batteries could be a key component of a new-look distributed energy grid where the majority of electricity generation comes from houses, businesses and large-scale renewables, and car batteries could be used to soak up cheap excess power.
A 2017 report by CSIRO found with good planning and reforms by 2050 a distributed energy grid would pay up to $2.5 billion a year to customers who supplied power back to the network, and deliver an annual electricity saving of $414 to an average household
Energy Minister Angus Taylor said the government was focused on removing barriers to the take-up of electric vehicles.
“We want to back transport technologies and local businesses that enable consumer choice and have the potential to lower energy costs,” Mr Taylor said.
The Morrison government has committed to deliver policy on the emerging electric vehicle industry by the end of the year.
In March it committed $68.5 million seed funding for the Reliable Affordable Clean Energy for 2030 Co-operative Research Centre (RACE for 2030), which also attracted commitments of private industry investment up to $280 million. RACE for 2030 will research advanced energy technology including a national network of electric vehicle charging stations.
Australia trails the world in electric vehicles, which accounted for just 0.6 per cent of vehicles sold last year. But sales of electric cars, including hybrid plug-ins, more than tripled in the past year to 6718, up from 2216 in 2018. The Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics forecasts 60 per cent of new cars sales in Australia will be electric by 2046.
CEFC’s $3.5 million investment in Jet Charger is part of a capital raising that attracted $4.5 million in total.
Extracted from The Sydney Morning Herald