Australians will benefit from improved electric vehicle (EV) charging technology with a new $3.5 million investment from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), helping to drive down the cost of charging stations and make them more user friendly.
JET Charge, one of Australia’s leading EV charging infrastructure manufacturers, received the $3.5 million equity investment from the CEFC to support the deployment of smart charging hardware under a services-based model, helping to drive down the cost of smart and connected EV charging stations and make them more user friendly for drivers.
“JET Charge has always believed in supporting mass EV uptake through making charging easy,” JET Charge co-founder and CEO, Tim Washington, said.
“To date, we’ve tried to make sure that anybody who wants to charge their EV, can. However, we need a step change in how we think about EV charging infrastructure if we want mass EV adoption.
“The biggest long-term barrier to EV uptake won’t be model availability, price, or battery life. It will be the ability to cost effectively, intelligently and safely integrate those EVs into national electricity grids, to maximise the use of renewables while ensuring EVs support a stronger electricity grid.”
Mr Washington said the deployment of JET Charge smart charging technology is an important first step in ensuring that EV charging occurs when the electricity grid is best able to support it. In addition, it has the potential to allow the matching of EV charging to times when renewable power penetration into the grid is at its highest, promoting the use of clean power for EV charging.
“In conjunction with our globally leading energy management systems, our goal is to facilitate compatible EVs in becoming an asset for the grid, with the future capacity to discharge electricity to homes, buildings and the wider grid when demand is high, and financially reward EV drivers for doing so,” Mr Washington said.
“We believe that through a combination of smart charging, demand response, ancillary grid services and vehicle to grid technology, we can make EV charging effectively free for Australian EV drivers within five years. That is our goal. We think that if we can make charging free, then the path to 100 per cent lower emissions transport will be shorter.”
Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, Angus Taylor, said this investment will help make charging more user friendly and will better integrate EVs into the electricity grid.
