condo electrical room, breakers, submeters oh my.

[kmngq]

So I live in a ~25 unit condo.

The building manager took me to the electrical room and showed me. I took some quick pictures, which came out blurry. but here it is.

One of meters is to my unit. On the other side of this wall that the entire panel is on, as my luck would have it, is my parking spot. Drilling and running conduit to my spot is out of the question for me. If its going to take that much moneyto do this, im not going to install an EV charger. Im just going to sign up for a evgo dc charging membership.

However, I came up with the thought that if a licensed electrician were to pull power from my unit and install a 14-50 outlet right underneath these panels, and run about a 20 foot extension cable to my spot, would it work??

 

[Lloyd]

Extension cables are not code and would not be allowed by your condo association.

You have a house panel with breakers in the middle of your picture (HP-1). Perhaps they would allow a pay for use 'chargepoint' or other device to the parking lot from that panel for all to use.

 

[kmngq]

Extension cables are not code and would not be allowed by your condo association.

You have a house panel with breakers in the middle of your picture (HP-1). Perhaps they would allow a pay for use 'chargepoint' or other device to the parking lot from that panel for all to use.

thanks for your response. yea i figured extension cables arent up to code. some of the conduits do go to the garage. maybe theres some extra room in one of them where i can get an 14-50 outlet in the garage.

 

[miimura]

Drilling a hole through one concrete wall for a conduit to a single charging station or 14-50 socket on the other side of the wall does not sound at all unreasonable in cost. There is space for a single breaker box to be mounted directly below a column of meters. To me, this is actually not bad for a common area install. The cost would be less than for me to add a 50 amp circuit to the garage at my single family home.

 

[joefee]

This can be done with a sub meter for $750 - $1700 if your spot is not too far from the electrical room.

 

[Frank MS60]

Would your Condo Association be interested in installing outlets for every condo/parking space? Maybe include a Tesla compact Supercharger? It's the coming thing.

 

[joefee]

In CA it's the law SB880 ... HOA's have to provide access/EV owners have to pay reasonable costs.

 

[miimura]

Drilling a hole through one concrete wall for a conduit to a single charging station or 14-50 socket on the other side of the wall does not sound at all unreasonable in cost. There is space for a single breaker box to be mounted directly below a column of meters. To me, this is actually not bad for a common area install. The cost would be less than for me to add a 50 amp circuit to the garage at my single family home.

In case I wasn't clear here, I'm proposing that you tap into your existing meter, even in the middle of that array of meters, and install a small box with a single 240V breaker, adjacent to the array of meters, then take the conduit to your parking space.

As mentioned above, it would be better if there was capacity on the HOA Common Area meter to provide the ability to power several different parking spaces with their own EVSEs and establish a reimbursement system through the association. That up-front effort will make everyone's life easier in the long run. If you can get even 1 or 2 other association members to share the up-front cost to establish that kind of scheme, it will be better in the long run.

 

[kmngq]

thanks for the replies guys. so our garage is pretty crammed. we have stacker lifts for our cars. And those take up a lot of juice. I dont think theres enough power in the middle panel breakers to support another 40 or 50amp breaker.

chargepoint, might be an idea, but its so crammed that i dont know if there is room to put a charging box in our garage.

im gonna do a walk thru and brainstorm with an hoa board member sometime next week. ill let you guys know what happens.

 

[Nda721]

There is obviously enough power... remember your lifts aren't moving consistently right?

 

[DrivingRockies]

Beautiful conduit work.

 

[Lloyd]

thanks for the replies guys. so our garage is pretty crammed. we have stacker lifts for our cars. And those take up a lot of juice. I dont think theres enough power in the middle panel breakers to support another 40 or 50amp breaker.

chargepoint, might be an idea, but its so crammed that i dont know if there is room to put a charging box in our garage.

im gonna do a walk thru and brainstorm with an hoa board member sometime next week. ill let you guys know what happens.

I'd like to see a photo of the stackers!

If you set your charging a low amperage and off hours you could probably use the feed for the stackers.