Australian regulator backs plan for households to fund EV chargers via electricity bills

Poles-and-wires companies will be able to charge all households for the cost of electric vehicle chargers under a federal government proposal backed by an energy regulator.

The Australian Energy Market Commission has given preliminary approval to a plan that would allow electricity networks to spread the cost of public EV charging infrastructure across all customers.

In a draft ruling, the commission said the benefits of fast-tracking the rollout of chargers would outweigh the costs to consumers, who would have to pay regardless of whether they own an EV.

The determination would affect customers across the national electricity market, which spans Australia's eastern seaboard.

The conditional support comes amid an increasingly fraught battle over who should be able to install public charging infrastructure across the country — and who should pay for it.

On one side are EV charging companies who argue Australia's fledgling market is highly competitive, privately provided and serving motorists well.

On the other are poles-and-wires firms who say their help will accelerate the adoption of EVs by providing much-needed charging infrastructure.

Australians are buying EVs in record numbers, with sales of electric models exceeding those of petrol cars for the first time in August.

However, Australia currently has one of the lower ratios of EVs to public chargers in the developed world, with fewer than 4,000 installed across the country.

Fixing 'market failures'

Under its draft decision, the AEMC said network companies would be required to help EV charging providers that wanted to install hardware in "high density" inner city areas.

But where the private companies "didn't take up identified sites", the commission said poles-and-wires firms would be able to act as suppliers of last resort.

AEMC chair Anna Collyer said similar provisions would also apply in regional "charging blackspots".

Ms Collyer said the ruling would help unlock $40 million of federal funding that would pay for about 30 per cent of 14,000 chargers "where they are most needed".

She said networks would recover the rest from consumers, adding about $1 a year to a typical customer's electricity bill.

More than offsetting this cost, she said, would be the emissions reduction benefits, which "would accrue to everyone".

"It's looking at areas of potential market failure," Ms Collyer said.

"We're starting to see an emerging market for commercial charge point operators, as they've been called.

"But given the uptake that we've seen in EVs from the fuel crisis … the Commonwealth wants to make sure the charging infrastructure is keeping up with that and to remove barriers for people who may be considering an EV."

According to Ms Collyer, a lack of off-street parking in inner-city areas was an obstacle to many potential EV buyers, while the patchy nature of regional charging infrastructure was fuelling "range anxiety" more broadly.

She insisted the decision would be limited in its scope and targeted in its design.

For example, she said it would only apply to infrastructure delivered under a specific Commonwealth program that would run for five years from mid-2029.

"The Commonwealth's program is a targeted measure to help close the gap between the rising EV uptake and EV charging infrastructure," she said.

Change favours 'monopolies'

Although a draft, the ruling sparked a furious response from critics.

Ross De Rango, director of Vehicle Charging Solutions Australia, said the decision was a poor one that would ultimately hurt consumers.

Mr De Rango said there was no market failure when it came to charging infrastructure in Australia, where private firms were risking their own money to compete for business.

Poles-and-wires companies, by contrast, were regulated monopolies whose revenues — and profits — were guaranteed regardless of how much value consumers received.

"The public-facing EV charging infrastructure in this country is virtually entirely competitively owned," Mr De Rango said.

"There is no need for public charging infrastructure to be owned by monopolies where it can be owned by competitive interests instead.

"Allowing competitive ownership fosters innovation, fosters competition, drives outcomes that are better for the populace."

For Mr De Rango, the risk in the commission's decision was that network providers would be empowered to slowly take over the market while delivering poor services.

Whereas private companies lived or died by their performance and the efficient use of charging infrastructure, he said networks were under no such pressure.

As a result, he said there was little incentive for them to ensure their chargers were installed in the most suitable places and used most efficiently.

"Our country is going to need something on the order of $20 billion worth of public EV charging equipment installed over the coming decades," he said.

"And that equipment will all need to be installed, maintained and replaced as and when it fails and requires upgrades.

Stewart Joyce, chief executive of the National Electrical and Communications Association, was seething, saying the AEMC had effectively sided with network monopolies at the expense of consumers.

"Putting up electricity bills to pay for EV chargers shows staggering contempt for consumers battling in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis," Mr Joyce said.