Destination charger in Coober Pedy
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For our second night in Coober Pedy we swapped the campsite for a motel room at the same resort. Fran was unwell, and reception kindly changed the booking over for us without any fuss.
The room looked out over the diggings to an old windmill standing in the red earth, which is about as Coober Pedy a view as you could ask for. We had a slow start the next morning and a sleep in, our first of the trip.
The rooms sit at the other end of the grounds from the powered sites, behind a row of palms. The roof above them is packed end to end with solar panels, and on the wall below are two Tesla destination chargers, each with its own sign.
I wondered whether we would use them. Then I looked up the price and did the arithmetic, and on the way out of town we drove down to the fast charger instead, which is its own short story. A shame, really, because a sleep in is exactly when a car should be charging, and that roof would have been making the electricity to do it.
Charging
Two Tesla destination chargers by the motel rooms, rated to 22 kW. The catch is the fee, listed at $25 an hour. A Model Y tops out at 11 kW on AC, so an hour buys you 11 kWh at best, which works out to $2.27 per kWh. RAA's fast charger in town runs about 75c per kWh. So it is roughly three times the price for a fraction of the speed, and that is before you consider that a car left there overnight keeps paying long after it has finished charging.
What makes it puzzling rather than merely expensive is the roof above them, which is packed end to end with solar panels.
We never plugged into them, and I suspect almost nobody does. That is the sad part, because from the resort's side it must read as EV chargers not being worth having, when the actual problem is the way they are priced.
Related Posts
- The night before, sleeping in the car: Car camping in Coober Pedy at 3°C 30 Jul 2025
- The fast charger we used instead, and two blokes from Perth: From Perth, on petrol and electrons 31 Jul 2025
- Next stop north, almost at Uluru: Almost there… to Uluru 31 Jul 2025
- A week later, charger trouble heading south: Stuck in Glendambo with the local hero (Chris) 7 Aug 2025
- The whole trip, end to end: Tesla to Uluru: an 8000 km recap 11 Aug 2025
Links
- The PlugShare listing for these chargers, with the current rate plugshare.com
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