Cement Australia’s NSW Logistics Manager Phil Young was quick to endorse the opening of the first solar-powered Charge and Change Station for battery-electric trucks at the Moorebank Intermodal Precinct in Sydney earlier this month.
Young’s company has three retrofitted Kenworths – two 403s and a 410 – using Janus Electric’s cutting-edge facility with a fourth on its way, and a similar-sized fleet running out of Port of Melbourne.
The Janus-converted trucks use two 620kW batteries that slot into cavities behind the cab and each set can be changed for fully-charged batteries in just four minutes. Depending on the load, each truck gets around 400km on a fresh battery set over a 12-hour shift.
The first of the Clyde-based Cement Australia trucks have been running on the 2m x 1.2m batteries since April and Young has been impressed with the results.
“The drivers are really happy with them,” Young said.
“They’re a lot quieter, a lot more relaxing to drive – you just don’t get the noise and vibration.
“You also don’t use the braking as much because of the regenerative side of the electrical. So, they’re reading the road better, backing off more, putting more regen back into the batteries.”
“To start with, it was a slight change in driving style, but now you won’t get them out of the trucks.”
Cement Australia truckie Julian Petrovic backed Young’s assessment, citing the regenerative braking benefits as the major plus for drivers whose trucks are now able to run heavier due to a special exemption from the NSW Government.
“You feel less fatigued driving them – it’s quieter and there are less vibrations – and you don’t have to brake much because it regenerates itself,” said Petrovic, a truckie for more than 20 years.
“They’re the main differences to driving a diesel.”
Petrovic said the changeover of the batteries is a breeze. The drivers now pick up the trucks each day from the Moorebank precinct, with all the batteries ready to go for their shifts.
With the driver training and the on-board displays giving constant feedback to drivers, Petrovic also said he always feels safe and has total confidence in the technology.
“If there is a problem with the batteries, there is a notification.”
Young said Cement Australia is currently building its own Janus Electric Charge and Change Station at the company’s nearby Clyde depot and there are also plans to have one at its Glebe Island base utilising the 100 per recent renewable shore power for shipping.
“We’ve currently got eight trucks down there and we’d like all eight to be EV.”
It was one of Cement Australia’s converted trucks that caught fire on the West Gate Freeway in Melbourne in November 2023, due to an internal short of a single and now defunct battery cell, but Young has no qualms about safety.
“People forget there was a [diesel] truck fire on the M5 tunnel on Thursday last week [November 28] to do with brakes,” Young said.
“We’ve had these running around since April with no issues. There are a number of alarms and codes that can warn us ahead of time if there are any problems, and the drivers have been well trained. If anything happens, they know the process.
“But touch wood – battery technology keeps improving. It gets better and better every year.
“It’s a very low risk at the moment and we’re going to see that risk diminish further. We wouldn’t put our drivers in a high-risk situation and if these were that type of risk, we wouldn’t be using them.”
Andy Divall of Goulburn-based Divall’s Earthmoving and Bulk Haulage was another operator watching on with interest at the official launch at Moorebank earlier this month.
He’ll soon be using the Charge and Change station for his company’s first Janus-converted diesel truck, a Kenworth 403 in a tipper application running two trips a day out of Marulan into Liverpool, a 350km round trip.
Divall hopes to have the electric truck up and running by early March.
“I just want to try and make a difference in our carbon footprint, and try and make a difference for our kids,” said Divall, who plans to eventually have his own charge and change infrastructure at Goulburn or Marulan.
“The fact is, we’ve got 150 years’ worth of fossil fuel left so we’re a selfish race if we don’t do something now.”
Janus Electric CEO and co-founder Lex Forsyth is hoping to have as many as 10 trucks using the Moorebank station – one of nine in Australia – in the “not too distant future”.
“We’ll see this site probably double in size over the next six months, so we’ll have anywhere between eight to 10 batteries on charge here at one time,” Forsyth said.
So far Janus has had to stump up almost $300,000 for the solar-powered Moorebank facility and connection – the company is hoping for funding help from ARENA in the near future – with individual users paying around $250 a day for a fully-charged and installed battery.
The Janus software platform allows operators to see when the next solar-charged battery is available for installing.
“We’re in the process of being able to let the driver select a battery that is ready to go for them in advance. But the beauty of it is, we’re monitoring the data from everyone of these trucks and we understand when they’re going to need a battery.”
NSW Transport Minister Jo Haylen, who cut the ribbon at the official launch event, said the solar-powered station is a crucial step towards a “cleaner, greener future” for Australia’s transport sector.
Haylen also outlined what the NSW Government was doing to help pave the way for operators to make more use of greener technology.
“There are a range of different incentives available,” Haylen told Big Rigs.
“Firstly, we’re removing as much regulation as we can to make this possible, but also working with our different government partners – the federal government and ARENA and other grants they provide in the clean energy space.
“As well as making sure we’re working with local government because the road network is owned by all levels of government, and we need to work together on that.”