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NSW EV charging master plan
- Thread starter moa999
- Start date
That was also on my list but I ran out of time to cover it. I'll cover it in a follow-up.
While their plan for new builds is mostly heading in the right direction, I didn't get the sense they had thought much about existing Strata.
That's disappointing to hear. I live in a building completed last year and while the strata by-laws have accommodations to have EV chargers installed in private car spaces, when I asked the building manager about it they said it would be very difficult to lead wiring from each individual unit's submitter to their car space to make it happen.
I was hoping legislation would help push this along, otherwise I'd have to wait for a significant number of residents to take up EVs to get momentum on installing chargers. At the moment I'm the only one.
One obvious space challenge is to fit an additional circuit breaker for each EVSE. Presently there would only be a single main switch and a rail of breakers for common property.
Really dependent on the building.
I live in a 15+ story MDU.
My garage is 10 floors from my meter and not in the same riser.
We have separate strata sub-boards on every 2nd floor of the underground garage, but there would only be room for about 6 individual sub-meters, of about 50 carspots per floor.
I read this recently and thought of your meeting @Vostok. While British EV owner's needs are arguably different to ours in AU, this well written essay recounts a new owner's experience the Net-Zero team may find useful.
Streets ahead? What I’ve learned from my year with an electric car
Record sales and now news of a battery that lasts hundreds of miles. It’s getting better, but going green was tough, admits a reluctant pioneer
www.theguardian.com
I wonder if you could use the new Gen3 wall connector and configure it to bill owners directly? This way the electricity could come from the common area power and the OC could be re-imbursed from Tesla directly.
I believe the boards are on level 9 (it's a mixed use building with residential starting from 9) and the car space is on B2, so a similar situation.
This could be an option to consider.
What worked for me was building a pitch deck of using a few thousand dollars of OC capital works funding to install 1x cable per car space up the risers and then connect to the individual lot's meter. This meant it was a very consistent install and only requires messy riser work one time. Once the tails are in the basement level, its up the owner to run their own cable in a conduit to their car space with OC approval.
Chuq
Active Member
Connecting each owners charger directly to the meter seems like an overcomplicated way of doing it. I've seen installers use the method of connecting a series of charging units (enough for the volume of EV owners in the building, with a couple to spare for growth/visitors/etc) to the buildings central supply. Then each EV owner gets a fob, parts in any of the EV charging spaces and they can swipe on after connecting. The building management pays for the connection and bills each owner on a monthly basis (can be managed via a 3rd party so the building management doesn't have to do anything)
Benefits:
Benefits:
- All charging units can share a single connection (e.g. rather than 6x individual 7 kW circuits, there could be a single 22 kW circuit with 6 chargers on it. Individual charging speeds are reduced if everyone happens to be charging at once
- Less physical wiring needed
- Easy to expand when more owners get EVs
- No owner is dependent on a single charger. If someone blocks the space or hardware needs repairing, owner can use another space
I contracted the developer in my new building to run a 20 amp circuit from my allocated carspace to my meter upstairs. The building should be finished in a few months. The absolute last thing I'd want to deal with is ongoing complexity with key fobs, shared parking spaces, shared circuits etc. I just want to use my own space like a normal person, but plug the car in. Do it once, do it right, forget all about it.
New build is quite a different situation to a legacy apartment block.
This existing block can't even fix their intercom wiring. Very interesting read relating to running wiring in an existing multistorey apartment block
The Park Regis intercom broke years ago, then COVID came knocking
It was once feted as Australia’s tallest – and most luxurious – apartment building but residents of the Sydney CBD’s Park Regis today live in what’s almost become a fortress.
Maximillan
Member
The new build doesn't yet have a Strata Committee, that on its own removes 99% of the complexity of the solution.
Question - why not get a 32A circuit rather than the 20A?
The contract said the building wouldn’t have EV charging at all, because the proposed infrastructure wouldn’t support it. They then quoted $15k to install a three-phase charger. I told them no, all I want is 32 amps on controlled load 2 or 20 amps on a normal circuit, to my own meter, and I offered to sign an agreement I wouldn’t charge on stinking hot afternoons when the infrastructure would be stressed. They took that to their electrician and came back quoting $1500 for 20 amps without asking to sign any such agreement. I then signed the main contract.
Simple fact is I charge on 12 amps now, and I don’t care. Heck, my Uber riders baulk when I say I’m a renter and I charge off an extension lead out the bedroom window. Sparkies in particular chuckle a bit when they think back to every client with more dollars than sense who they’ve installed three phase chargers for, who drive maybe 1/10th the kilometres I do, and paid $5k+ for the privilege.
I read this recently and thought of your meeting @Vostok. While British EV owner's needs are arguably different to ours in AU, this well written essay recounts a new owner's experience the Net-Zero team may find useful.
Streets ahead? What I’ve learned from my year with an electric car
Record sales and now news of a battery that lasts hundreds of miles. It’s getting better, but going green was tough, admits a reluctant pioneer
Thanks @Petros - very interesting and the sort of stuff they need to think about. As EVs become more commonplace, the buyers will be, shall we say, “less invested” than us early adopters in making them “work” and so the charging solutions really need to be straightforward and available.
My 3-phase wall connector came with the car, and cost $500 to install
Do I charge often at 11 kW? No - in fact, I’ve only done it once in 2 years.
Was it really important on that one occasion to be able to charge at 11 kW? Yes. Yes, it was.
Sounds like your sparky cheaped out on the Type B RCDs, didn't have to do any trenching, already had three-phase to work with, and didn't need to do any other site upgrades or drill through a firewall.My 3-phase wall connector came with the car, and cost $500 to install
When I drive Uber and sparkies ask me about this stuff, they tend to have had rich clients who just wanted the best. Or uninformed clients who just sent the specifications page from the manual & ended up with three-phase 16a or higher because the sparky didn't understand what the customer wanted, and perhaps the customer didn't understand what they wanted either. They're in business. They make money. And they spend some of that money on ubers to ensure they still have a drivers license on Monday.
If their clients were more specific in what they asked for, or if they requested a budget install, they might have landed with single phase 32a (or less - up to whatever the main breaker can handle). But EVs have been for rich people thus far. And many installs were for people who hadn't even taken delivery of the car yet. They didn't know what to ask for and overspent. But I suppose they fall into the category I mentioned earlier of do it once, do it right.
There's a 50kW DC Evie charger about three blocks away from the new building. If I really needed to charge in a hurry, I have options.
In my case, my existing garage circuit was shared with a bunch of other outlets in the house, and I didn't really trust the old wiring to run flat out all night every night anyway, so I wanted a new circuit for charging that I could know was up to scratch.
The new circuit required trenching and a new switch board (since the old one did not meet standards), and I already had three phase at the house, so the incremental cost to run a three phase breaker and cable on top of all the required work wasn't much, and I went with that.
The new circuit required trenching and a new switch board (since the old one did not meet standards), and I already had three phase at the house, so the incremental cost to run a three phase breaker and cable on top of all the required work wasn't much, and I went with that.
