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More models to choose from and much quicker charging are encouraging Australians to buy electric cars.

Although electric vehicles (EVs) represent a tiny percentage of the market, it is a fast-moving one.

The Crawley campus has a charging station which is mostly used by Electrical Engineering students who are working on EVs, and other members of the WA Electric Vehicle Trial.

But Thomas Bräunl, co-director of the trial and Director of the Renewable Energy Vehicle Project (RE V) in the School of Electrical Electronic and Computer Engineering, said private owners of EVs in Perth could use this and all 23 charging outlets in the city once they had signed up for a swipe card.

"At the moment, it is a free service, and a full charge takes only three hours, so it is a very attractive prospect for people with electric cars," Professor Bräunl said.

There are probably fewer than 50 privately-owned EVs in Perth and 11 in the trial. "Both Mitsubishi and Nissan have recently released EVs but they are quite expensive for small cars, around $50,000, but this price will come down quickly as the technology improves and more people buy them," he said.

Private owners who charge their EVs at home overnight still need to have their cars plugged into a power source for about 10 hours.

But the station at UWA, under the Computer Science building, does a full charge in just three hours.

"Quite often we are faced with the choice of two different world standards in a new developing technical area, unsure which one will be adopted," Professor Bräunl said.

"Remember having to make the choice between VHS and Beta; Blu-ray and HD DVD? The same is currently happening with EVs. There are two competing standards for EV charging. Type 1 supports only single-phase charging and is the US/Japanese standard, while the European standard Type 2 supports either single or three-phase charging. Since Australia (unlike the US) has a three-phase power grid, the choice seems to be obvious, but as Australia has not yet officially adopted either standard, we currently see a mix of EVs and charging stations being imported into the country.

"So it is good to know that the recently installed EV charging station at UWA is an IEC Type 2 station that can charge either type of EV. Equally important, it is a Level 2 charging station (7.7kW), which reduces the charging time from around 10 hours for a full charge on a standard power outlet to only three hours."

The UWA charging station is part of a network of 23 EV charging outlets all over Perth. This network has been funded by an ARC Linkage project with partners UWA Engineering, UWA Business School, Murdoch University, WA Department of Transport, CO2Smart and the Australian EV Association, with external partners City of Fremantle, City of Swan, RAC, MainRoads, WaterCorp, The West Australian , Energy Made Clean and station sponsor Galaxy Resources.

The stations are networked and transmit their data to a server in Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, where user data and load profiles are being analysed by PhD student Stuart Speidel.

"This gives us a valuable insight into the requirements of EV charging infrastructure for the next two decades, when we expect millions of EVs, which will have a significant impact on the electricity grid," Professor Bräunl said.

"Power companies were concerned that the necessity of a 10-hour charge would mean everybody would charge overnight and create another peak in power usage. But the shorter charge now available means people can charge their cars while they work. The peak time for our trial charging stations is around noon."

The EV Charging Linkage project cooperates closely with the WA Electric Vehicle Trial, co-directed by Professor Bräunl with additional partners City of Mandurah, City of Perth, WA Department of Environment and Conservation, Landcorp and Telstra.

The first EV trial in Australia started in 2010 and uses 11 Ford Focus cars, which have been converted to electric drive by local company EV Works.

Link to charging station locations and further information

Published in UWA News , 20 August 2012