A Year In: What Operators Are Asking from Mobile Energy

What has come up most since our units went on the market, and how it lines up with where the industry is heading.

Grid Rig units have been on the market for almost a year. In that time we've spoken with mining and construction contractors, transport and bus operators, land managers, engineers, hire companies and event organisers, along with a few people we never expected to hear from.

Some things have come up again and again. We're a small company and we wouldn't claim our conversations represent the whole market, but each of the trends below also shows up in the public data, which is why we think they're worth writing down.

Remote sites bring the clearest briefs

The most specific requests we get come from the furthest away: island communities, outstations, remote transport routes and even projects in the Pacific. These operators tend to know exactly what they need, and they often start with how a unit will physically reach them. Where the standard range doesn't suit a weight limit or a transport method, the conversation turns to a custom build.

The economics explain why they're so far ahead. The Northern Territory alone powers 72 remote communities and 79 outstations through Power and Water's Indigenous Essential Services, which burns around 25 million litres of diesel a year and spent $35.2 million on distillate in 2023-24. Western Australia's Horizon Power took on 117 remote Aboriginal communities in 2023, and Queensland's Ergon runs 39 communities on 34 isolated networks.

At the pump, diesel on the APY Lands reached $3.90 a litre against $2.39 in Adelaide this year. Across the Pacific, where several nations still generate 80 to 95 per cent of their electricity from diesel, supply costs around US$0.47 per kilowatt-hour, nearly three times the global average.

When diesel arrives by sea at those prices, a battery charged from solar wins on cost well before emissions enter the conversation.

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People want power as much as charging

We didn’t see this one coming. The industrial power outputs on our units were meant to let a site run tools alongside vehicle charging. They’ve become a reason in their own right for people to get in touch.

Builders want extra capacity for sites whose temporary supply is already maxed out. Facilities want backup power. Equipment suppliers want a way to run electric equipment on sites that have nothing to plug into. In those conversations, vehicle charging barely comes up.

Construction is moving the same way. CPB Contractors fitted a 123 kilowatt-hour solar and battery system to a HumeLink site and cut diesel generation to one hour a day, a 98 per cent emissions reduction it is now rolling out to eight more sites. A METRONET site in Perth that could not be grid-connected ran on a solar and battery hybrid and saved around 45,000 litres of diesel.

Bus depots sit somewhere in between. Charging is still what they need, but the question operators bring is what happens when the grid can’t deliver, which makes it a backup power problem as much as a charging one. New South Wales is converting 11 Sydney bus depots for a fleet of more than 8,000 buses, and Transport for NSW’s own description of the Brookvale upgrade includes “contingency measures for power availability”. In Canberra, the ACT Government has said the Belconnen depot can’t be upgraded for electric buses because of limits on available power across the whole precinct.

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Most fleets are starting small

Almost nobody we speak to is electrifying everything at once. The usual plan is a couple of vehicles now and heavier ones in a few years. Farms that still run mostly on diesel want to charge one or two machines. People usually ask about our smaller units first, which makes sense.

The national figures show the same thing from two directions. In August, battery electric vehicles reached 24.9 per cent of new vehicle sales and outsold every other powertrain for the first time. Heavy vehicles are years behind. Electric models made up just 0.9 per cent of trucks and heavy vans sold earlier this year, and the Australian truck fleet has a median age of 15 years, so turnover is slow regardless of the policy settings.

For operators, that means buying for the fleet they have while leaving room for the one they'll have later. A unit that can be relocated, paired with a second unit, or recharged from mains or solar as the site develops suits that better than infrastructure that’s built once and sized for a fixed load.

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Highways keep coming up

We hear regularly from operators interested in roadside rescue for EVs that have run flat between towns, and from people looking at charging along freight corridors.

The data backs them up. RACV says out-of-charge callouts for EVs have risen by more than 50 per cent a year on average since 2023, and it's now trialling a patrol van with a 20-kilowatt DC charger. Over Easter, more than 20 cars queued for 12 chargers at one Hume Highway site. For heavy vehicles, ARENA's modelling calls for up to 165 freight charging hubs nationally, but the first intercity truck hubs are only now breaking ground and none is open between capital cities yet. We covered the heavy vehicle side in more detail in our piece on Australia's electric prime mover trials.

A Grid Rig unit isn't a highway charging hub. A trailer-mounted unit can, though, put range back into a stranded car, and that is what a regional recovery operator needs to build a service around.

Hire businesses want units to hire out

We've also heard from businesses that want units to hire out for construction, events and temporary sites, rather than to use themselves.

That fits what the big hire companies are doing. Kennards Hire already carries battery units in its fleet and says customers have reported diesel reductions of up to 70 per cent on construction sites. Diesel isn't going anywhere quickly, though. Coates is tripling its large-capacity generator fleet over 12 months to meet mining demand, pointing to grid constraints. Hire fleets will be carrying both for some time yet.

How we build for the industry

What we’ve heard over almost a year all points in one direction. Operators want power they can get to the site, however remote, sized for the fleet they have now and easy to add to or move as that changes.

That’s what Grid Rig was built for. These conversations have sharpened our focus on site power as much as vehicle charging, and on the smaller units that suit an operator starting out with a couple of vehicles. Our aim is to keep building around what operators actually ask for.

Our range of mobile BESS units runs from 103 kilowatt-hours to two megawatt-hours, with DC fast charging and industrial power outputs on the same unit, in mobile, trailer-mounted and fixed configurations. Every model can be upgraded to mine and industrial specification for harsh sites. Where the standard range doesn't fit a site constraint, a weight limit or a transport method, we build to the client's specifications.

Every unit carries AS3000 Part One compliance certification and is supported through service level agreements, with licensed electrical commissioning through our sister company Vantage West.

If any of the above sounds like your situation, talk to our team. Start with the constraint you already know for certain, and we'll work from there.