Short Circuits #1
A naughty Stobie pole, 50-year old EV tariffs and even older EV chargers.
This is an experiment in a new sub-newsletter with shorter snippets and interesting tidbits we’ve seen around the traps.
Stobie Poles
Chief Tasmanian correspondent for Currently Speaking, Matt Grover, alerted us to this left-of-centre story from The Guardian about Stobie poles, which is extremely our shit.
2024 marks the 100th anniversary of the humble Adelaidean Stobie pole.1 If you’re wondering what on earth a Stobie pole is, ABC News wrote up a great history of the Stobie pole last year and SAPN has a dedicated history.
The TL;DR of The Guardian article is that forty years ago a former Archibald prize winner painted a raunchy depiction of Adam and Eve on a Stobie pole and it was unveiled by iconic former premier Don Dunstan; oh and it was all done to promote a hair salon. The council found it offensive and ordered it removed. It was relocated at cost but has since gone missing.
Why was it so raunchy? “There was a very strategically placed snake starting at Adam and ending at Eve.” Wink. Perhaps not a literal interpretation of Genesis, but later books contain weirder things.
We need to know where the iconic Stobie pole is. The Currently Speaking tip line is officially open.
Also, the Head of Corporate Affairs at SAPN is a musician and wrote a tribute song for Stobie poles and it’s fantastic.2
Like we said, extremely our shit.
EV Tariffs older than your dad
Rare that we talk about non-NEM things, but this was too interesting not to post, shoutout to former chief Canberran correspondent Mitch O’Neill!
Pearl Donohoo-Vallett from PEPCO the posted this screenshot on LinkedIn of a tariff from the late 1970s for a controlled load off-peak electric vehicle charging tariff.
This was particularly interesting because the middle of twentieth century was a mostly dead period for EV development. But the late 60s and 70s saw renewed interest and improved battery technology and the oil crisis of the early 1970s lead directly to the 1976 Electric and Hybrid Vehicle Research, Development, and Demonstration Act being passed in America. It’s not clear how connected the timing of the PEPCO tariff and the federal legislation are, but it would make sense that utilities were paying attention.
EV development really took off in the 1990s with Californian air emissions legislation and then Tesla popularised the modern EV.
Speaking of Tesla, last week they ctrl-alt-deleted their entire Supercharging team for seemingly no reason, which is an excellent segue into…
EV Charging stations of the early twentieth century
The LinkedIn thread above pointed us towards a 1916 map of public EV charging stations in Chicago.
Public EV fast charging seems like a completely modern phenomenon, but given the proportion of electric vehicles in the early twentieth century, combined with nascent residential electrification, it probably shouldn’t be surprising at all.
The linked Reddit thread above has some interesting commentary and extra tidbits, but really you should read the sub-thread where someone talks shit about CHAdeMO and it devolves into a long discursive thread about own a Nissan Leaf. Come for the map, stay for the EV nerds arguing.
If you don’t dive into the CHAdeMO sub-thread, then you should definitely explore the Smithsonian’s digitised records of Electric Vehicles magazine, from 1913 to 1917.
The patent was granted in 1924.
More about Stobie poles and more of the song here.
Stobie poles - I had to look them up. Seems they are an SA thing, as beloved there in the Electricity Industry as Haigh's is for sweet-tooths?