Fully Charged Sydney 2024

Setting of from Emerald Victoria to Fully Charged Show’s Everything Electric expo in…

…Sydney NSW, we headed… in the other direction, south through Gippsland to Tarra-Bulga National Park, and a walk to the suspension bridge.

After our short exploration of the Tarra-Bulga National Park, we drove north to Moe to…

…meet our friends, Ron & Sue, for dinner. We’re staying at their place tonight, in nearby Budgeree. Their house is off grid, powered by solar and an array of lead acid batteries. They drive a BYD Atto 3 which has V2L (vehicle to load) which means that, if necessary, they can plug their household items into their car. We wish our Tesla had that facility. Charging: We try to avoid “stopping to charge” specifically. Instead we aim to just charge “while parked” to do something else. For example, we were running 15 minutes early for dinner. We could have parked at the restaurant for that time, but we parked at the RACV Chargefox charger on the way there, instead. After dinner, we all dropped by Coles to grab some dessert. While parked anyway for eight minutes, we plugged into the Tesla Supercharger. We didn’t wait to fill up. We only charged while parked anyway. So, we spent a total of about a minute of our time charging, but got nearly 20 minutes of charge.

After staying overnight with our friends in Budgeree, we followed their BYD Atto 3 a few…

…kilometers north to Cafe 3869 in Yinnar. We had the biggest coffee we’ve ever seen. It was like a bucket-o-chino! We started heading north-ish, past the Loy Yang Coal Fired Power Station, and giant open cut coal mines with lots of sprinklers to try to contain the dust 😷. We stopped in Bairnsdale for a brief break for the toilet and a stretch. A ute had ICEd one of the charging bays, but the signage doesn’t clearly state that they can’t. We walked through the large park that seems to divide the main road in town. Then properly north along the Great Alpine Road towards Bright. Charging: The Tesla Superchargers in Bairnsdale were installed in the past few months, since we’ve last been through here. As always, super easy to use. Just park, plug in, walk away. No card, cashier, queue or waiting. It probably took 20 seconds of my time for the charging. By the time we returned from the toilet, it was all done. We unplugged at drove away.

Today we drove along the Great Alpine Road from Bairnsdale in Gippsland Victoria, through…

…Mount Hotham and various lookouts pointing at the highest places in Australia, including Mount Kosciusko. Unsurprisingly, The Great Alpine Road is the highest highway in Australia. Stunning scenery, on top of the world. We’re on our way to Fully Charged Show’s Everything Electric show in Sydney, and to catch up with family in NSW. Charging: From Mount Hotham down to Bright was about 55km, but we only used 1% battery, because the downhill run actually charges the battery (and doesn’t wear out the brake pads).

On our way from Bright, Victoria to Yass and Berry in NSW, first stop in Yackandandah for…

…toilet, coffee and… cake. Francis hid from the paparazzi shot, while Tom claimed it was ordered when he ducked outside. Yackandandah is one of our favourite places to stop along the way. It featured in an episode of “Back Roads” on ABC. https://iview.abc.net.au/show/back-roads/series/1/video/IV1507H003S00 Charging: “Yack” has its own “Yack” community EV charger in town. We plug in while parked, so we’re usually fully charged when we get back to the car. It takes about 30 seconds of my time to plug in, and hit start on the Chargefox app. I was interested to see that the charger costs a third less between 10am and 3pm, perhaps because solar makes it free? When we arrived, a Nissan Leaf was plugged into the charger’s Chademo cable. I thought that we wouldn’t be able to charge until they had finished. But I plugged in anyway to the CCS2 cable, to try it out. To my pleasant surprise, it charged both our cars at the same time. The Nissan Leaf was nearly finished when we arrived and was…

After a long drive from Bright, through Yackandandah and Yass, we arrived in Berry…

…checked into the Berry View Motel, then drove around the corner to the Berry Bowling Club for dinner. A ute parked adjacent to us in the motel car park illustrates that some vehicles are just too big for current car parking. We had to reverse in at an angle to avoid scraping along the ute’s towball. Next morning, we popped into the local IV Coffee outlet, appropriately adorned with ivy. Then onward to the Fully Charged Show Everything Electric expo in Sydney. Charging: Since we were parking at the Berry Bowling Club for dinner anyway, we plugged into The NRMA fast charger on site. This would normally take about ten seconds, but the NRMA app had forgotten my credit card details, so I had to re-enter them. It also had some user interface oddities that prolonged the experience. Much of the app appears in web portals, which is not a coherent experience. I’d love to make a better app for them, specifically for EV charging.

We arrived in Bright, after our trek north through the Victorian alps.

Fortunately summer days are long, so we still had plenty of light. We plugged into the town’s Evie Networks charger while we had dinner at the nearby Alpine Bright pub. We checked in to Motel Sierra and collected our travel blanket that Peter had kindly kept for us, since we left it there months ago on our last trip through. Carrying bags upstairs was offset by a cup of tea and biscuit on the balcony. Next morning, we had brekky out at The Riverdeck Kitchen, overlooking the river that runs through town. Francis managed to somehow squirt the yolk from her Eggs Benedict precisely onto her T-shirt. We watched as someone parked next to our Tesla, right up against the line, then inevitably hit our car with their door 🤦 Charging: The Evie Networks charger works just fine. Plug in, tap in the app, walk away, order dinner The charging finished before dinner arrived, so we moved the car.

Arrived at Fully Charged Show’s Everything Electric Sydney, just in time for a vegan pie…

…and a quick view of some of the exhibits. Have to eat quickly before we’re on the panel with Evie Networks to discuss how to improve EV charging.

Wrapping up our first day at Fully Charged Show’s Everything Electric Sydney. G

uest panelist for Evie Networks discussing better public charging. Attended several panel discussions in the Giga Theatre and Mega Theatre. Spotted a few solar race cars. I grilled the team at the Enphase Energy stand on how I can turn off my solar production remotely. No satisfactory answer yet, so I’ll be back to grill them tomorrow. We asked the fire warden how many EV fires have occurred here so far. He said “zero” in sign, in the photo. Unsurprising since there have only been six EV fires in Australia (ever), none of them while charging. Finished off laughing, watching Jack Scarlett and Imogen Bhogal, from Fully Charged Show, cooking Pad Thai on an induction stove. Hosted by Zoe Bingley-Pullin (previously hosted Good Chef, Bad Chef). Back again tomorrow.

Our second day at Fully Charged Show’s Everything Electric Australia 2024. W

e checked out Tiny Solar Homes, Bosh Cooking, many vehicles (see previous post) and a few more panel discussions. I am particularly interested in Vehicle to Everything, but hampered until Tesla enables it on their cars, like BYD, Ionic, MG and others already have. I briefly ran into Chris Bowen MP (walking with Robert Llewellyn's and Dan Caesar). I asked him to stop subsidising fossil fuel companies. “One thing at a time, mate” was his response. I am very glad that he has finally brought in vehicle emissions standards and other positive steps. But stopping tax payer funding of fossil fuel companies, which are killing us, seems like a much bigger impact. No reason for us to wait to do that. The planet can’t wait, for sure. +1.5°C and still climbing 😢.

So many different modes of transport at Fully Charged Show’s Everything Electric, Sydney.

Off we go from Sydney back to home in Victoria.

Slow start with bumper traffic through Wahroonga. Popped the car on Autopilot and poured a cup of tea.