EV holiday power blowouts put pressure on lines network

The rented trailer was uncoupled from the car, chocks beneath the wheels. Our tents were pitched. The kids had changed into their togs and run off down to the beach. And as the evening shadows lengthened, savoury smells were drifting over from the campground kitchen.

It was shaping up as the perfect Kiwi holiday – yet one thing niggled at the cliché. The closest public EV charger was nearly an hour away in Whangārei.

It was the the second week of January. Towing a trailer up from Auckland to Whangaruru Harbour had taken its toll – we had less than 30 percent charge left in our car. That wouldn’t give us much peace of mind for trips to other beaches and to the ice cream store in Russell over the coming days, let alone the trip home at the end of the week.

We’d known it would be a bit of a test, driving our newish BYD electric SUV 220km north from Auckland with a family of five, bags and boogie boards obscuring the rear vision, and a trailer loaded high with tents and bunks, chilly bins, a foldout camp kitchen, BBQ and cooker and LPG bottle and much more….

What we hadn’t known was that we’d not just be testing our car and our range anxiety; we’d also be testing New Zealand’s power and charging network.

Here’s why. This sunny January, climate science agency Niwa predicted high temperatures from Cape Reinga to the Bluff, drawing the whole country to the beach. The country’s holiday parks are on track to break two million guest nights, an all-time record for any month.

And for the first time, campers are bringing their electric vehicles on the road in significant numbers.

Most EVs on the market now have ranges of more than 400km, and a bit more space in the boot. With the previous government’s clean car subsidy, that gave unprecedented numbers of New Zealanders confidence to buy their first EVs last year – there was a mad rush before the subsidy ended at New Year.

This country’s top-selling EVs last year were the Tesla Model Y (533km range) and the BYD Atto 3 (420km) which are both marketed as crossover SUVs – and you can fit a towbar on either.

There are now 101,000 light EVs on our roads. This month, they have turned up at the nation’s holiday parks, and with their arrival comes a new pressure on remote infrastructure.

When I fronted up at the Whangaruru Beachfront Camp office, asking to plug in my EV overnight at the powerpoint by our tent site, campground owner Robynne Cooper was askance.

There’s not much you can’t beg, buy or borrow from a campground store. An hour from the nearest supermarket, the shelves in Whangaruru were loaded with all the emergency supplies imaginable, from sunblock and and mayonnaise, to babies’ nappies and women’s hygiene products, to outboard motor spark plugs and the oft-forgotten can openers.

One thing campgrounds sell is electricity. Powered sites are rented out for a premium – but traditionally, that power has been intended for boiling the kettle in a caravan, not for hooking up an EV for 12 hours.

Cooper had received correspondence from the Holiday Parks Association, she told me, warning against allowing guests to charge their EVs – it had caused “power surges and outages” at some campgrounds.

This week, Holiday Parks NZ chief executive Fergus Brown clarifies the association’s position. It’s not that they’re advising campgrounds against allowing guests to plug in their EVs; it’s more that they’re advising members to set rules around charging.

Some campgrounds, like Shelly Beach in Coromandel and Mangawhai Heads in Northland, have installed fast chargers. But for most, the question is still about visitors who’ve brought their 10 amp ‘granny charger’ from home and just want to plug into a regular three-point socket overnight.

At least two holiday parks have suffered outages, he says, when visitors have plugged in their cars without asking, and overloaded the campground’s network.

And this raises questions for more than just the country’s 400 holiday parks; there are rural communities all over the country with constrained capacity in their lines networks; even some parts of our cities.

As New Zealand homes and businesses turn from burning petrol and gas and coal in their cars and trucks and heating and industrial boilers, the country needs more renewable generation. We all know that. But it also needs greater capacity in the national grid and local lines networks.

The hard-to-reach corners

When the British and Irish Lions toured New Zealand in 2017, fans had a few down days between when the Lions played the Hurricanes in Wellington, and the penultimate test match at the same stadium.

Holiday parks were full to overflowing with camper-vans – and at the Top 10 Holiday Park in Martinborough, it all proved too much when the Brits all boiled their jugs for a cuppa at the same time.

The fuse on the transformer, up a pole at the gate to the campground, tripped. The lights went out. “The women were worried about the heating going off,” says campground owner Lisa Cornelissen. “The guys were easily pacified. We just gave them all of our beer supplies while we waited for the lines company to turn up.”

That was six years ago; today, the threshold’s even lower. It just took a couple of Teslas charging on the same phase last year to blow the Martinborough campground’s fuses.

“An EV draws more power and it draws it constantly. So if you’ve got a camper-van and plug it in, they might draw more power occasionally if the kettle’s on and the heater’s on and they’re watching TV. But an EV draws that level of power constantly over time.”

These complaints about overloading aren’t just coming from EV-deniers.

Indeed, Cornelissen is quite the opposite. If my family thought we were brave hooking up a trailer to our EV and heading up the rural roads into the Far North, then it pales compared to her.

She and her husband Frank own the Martinborough holiday park, but they live rurally and off the grid. They also drive a Hyundai Ioniq EV.

There’s no fast public charger in Martinborough. And because they’re off the grid, they’re reliant on their home solar panels or wind turbine to charge the car – they have a small window of charging time between getting home from work and sunset.

That shows a somewhat courageous commitment to electrification!

Cornelissen laughs. While she and her husband are doing their best, it would help if there were public chargers available – but even the South Wairarapa District Council hasn’t been able to install one at its Martinborough office, because the nearby power transformer isn’t up to it.

“This comes back to the infrastructure,” Cornelissen says. “If we’re encouraging people to be solar and sustainable, then we need to support them with infrastructure like power networks.”

Blowing a fuse

Fergus Brown drives a Polestar EV. ChargeNet chief executive Danusia Wypych drives a Tesla Y. Vector lines boss Simon Mackenzie has installed chargers at his office for the fleet cars.

They’re all welcoming the new Government’s promise to grow the public charger network from 1200 to 10,000 chargers, the length of New Zealand – and they ask whether ministers have also considered the need to upgrade power networks to support the added demand. 

“The issue is a real thing and largely occurs due to the amount of load being connected to the area or facility at a point in time,” Mackenzie explains. “It’s not unlike in your own home if you try to connect too many appliances at a single outlet and run them at the same time the fuse will likely trip.

“So the transformer wont blow per se – it is rather the protection being a fuse that will operate and blow, which would require a new fuse.”

There’s a cost economy question for quiet communities like Whangaruru whose populations explode for just a couple of months of summer.

“The challenge is a real one and compounded by the dilemma of should the network be increased in capacity for meeting this extra load built only for a few days in the year,” he says.

“It costs a lot of money and then who pays? Residents who live there all year don’t necessarily want to have to pay for the upgrade when it’s not caused by them but rather holiday-makers.”

Mackenzie suggests one solution may be smart chargers that limit the number of cars that can charge at the same time in a campground or community. Otherwise, a solution is government-funded charging stations and network upgrades.

The biggest existing charging network is the nine-year-old private company ChargeNet with 102,000 registered customers and 346 public fast charging points, many part-funded by EECA, local councils or lines companies.

Danusia Wypych says they’re already scheduled to open 30 more sites this year, and 12 of those are in holiday communities.

“In smaller communities, lines capacity is an issue. That’s an issue shared in the major cities as well, where electricity utilisation is outgrowing the network that we have in place.” 

She’s hoping to work with the government to achieve its goal of 10,000 public chargers. National has proposed using the same industry co-investment model with which previous governments rolled out ultra-fast broadband.

“From our perspective, we see that there is private capital that wants to participate in building these networks,” Wypych says. “We think that’s the best option. Good, strong, clear contracts that deliver on the Government’s needs and outcomes, in partnership with the private sector.”

She points out that over the past nine years, ChargeNet has brought $3 to $4 of private capital to the table for every dollar of public investment. “So we’ve got a really strong history of matching, New Zealand and network needs with a private investment, alongside government support.”

Many of the sites take well beyond typical three-year private equity horizons to pay back their initial capital investment – and that’s a challenge as New Zealand tries to roll out public chargers to smaller communities.

The company is also having robust discussions with lines companies. “What we find most effective is when we can work closely with the network companies on what network capacity is available and what chargers we can get in there,” she says.

“They face their own challenges in how they’re funded and what freedom they have to support the charging network. So we’ve been very keen to work with them and with government, to make it easier for network companies to enable charge point operators to install public charging.

“And that will also help campgrounds and other users start to provide these facilities, for drivers and for visitors.”

As for me at Whangaruru Beachfront Camp?

I had a chat with Robynne Cooper. She agreed that for a small fee of $10, I could plug in my EV overnight, and she lent me a cable to connect up to the nearest camp power outlet.

Nobody blew a gasket.