I’ve been looking into whether an electric car (EV) is an option for me at the moment (short answer is no, price and practicality rule them out for now). One of the hurdles is installing a charging station in my apartment’s underground car parking space. I asked EVSE for information and they provided a short but useful guide.
There are a few technical difficulties with such an installation in apartment buildings. For example, there’s usually no power directly to the individual car space, and power to the car park area is on the common property meter. So there are challenges for the physical installation and for metering the usage back to the apartment owner. It’s all technically achievable, but in summary, depending on the electrical work needed, I’d be looking at from about $2,000 to $10,000 for an installation. That’s a pretty big add-on for an already expensive purchase.
Has anyone else had experience with getting an EV charging station installed, whether in a house, apartment, or elsewhere? Would a CHOICE guide to this be useful?
It might be interesting, but I suspect most people would choose to recharge at a local station. Not something I’m going to have to look at for myself so its all a bit academic. Even if I could afford an EV, I would not bother getting my own charging station…. theres one about 5 km from here, no difference to driving down to get petrol although the time taken no doubt is a lot longer. One might feel inclined to do the shopping, and then have a coffee and lunch somewhere. (The one I refer to is actually in a parking lot at a shopping centre)
It would. The issue is one that’s going to come up with increasing frequency. Owners of individual residences, apartment owners, bodies corporate, renters (or more accurately, rental property owners) will all face different challenges. It’s early days yet and the market is still in flux, but worth looking into.
Buying a motor vehicle (BEV’s still have a motor/s) is still very reliant on the skill of the car dealer vs the lack of knowledge of the consumer. Tesla might be the one that is a little different?
Is a car dealer the best place to get advice on home EV charging stations, EV friendly electricity plans, or subscribe to a National chain of BEV charging stations? Car dealerships are often in the consumer news for selling add ons of doubtful value.
A Choice guide may be essential. It’s also a great way to educate consumers while looking out for new and doubtful marketing practices. It’s an evolving technology and market place worthy of some well informed consumer advice. IMO.
P.S.
Don’t forget a home charging station can also act as a home battery using V2H or V2G technology. This needs more than just a compliant vehicle and charger. It needs a suitable electricity retail plan and independent assessment as to any benefit.
While I’m inclined to agree for most people, I’d be inclined to want to slow charge at home most of the time, to minimise battery wear by fast charging.
I’m considering this path myself and live in an apartment block, so I’d be very interested to hear outcomes.
Perhaps as a short term measure and a Body Corporate “being nice” and “Eco friendly” the BC may want to install a couple of free or at cost of power charging bays. This would allow any Unit occupant who has a EV to 80% charge their battery. Depending on where you park during work hours then a bit of charging can occur there as well if spots are allocated.
Not very far from us a petrol station has just installed 2 two point charging stations (distance 1.5km). I don’t think I would be concerned with range as our daily travel distances mean that most EVs are about a 4 day capacity from 100% to 0% so a recharge every 2 or 3 days is all we will need once we purchase our EV car. Still not as cheap as a Fossil Fuelled ones to buy but we are looking at much more than just pocket cost, we want to create a cleaner environment and encourage more EV sales.
The use of parking bays is a common cause for complaint in most strata titles. Parking bays are most commonly assigned by unit. Giving up any to provide charging bays would be a concern to overcome.
For new Strata titled property construction the Local Council and or State Govt could legislate every parking bay or a percentage of bays are charger ready. The best or preferred approach on how charging electrical power consumed is metered and best billed might also be addressed through legislation.
In the interim for existing properties there are many examples of disputes over the apportionment of costs and fees. A generalisation would be that a Body Corporate might agree to installation of charging facilities, but only if the full costs including installation are met by those using them. Any expenditure by the Body Corporate towards providing charging facilities (purchasing bays, electrical works, chargers etc) is also a Capital Cost, subject to levy and agreement by all owners. Assuming there is agreement on providing dedicated bays, outsourcing the costs to a user pays third party provider of charging stations would be one no cost solution for the BC? EG ChargeFox.
I think that an educational story will be valuable. It’s a challenge I have tackled before.
I strongly recommend that you start your research with actual EV owners. I own a PHEV so I and not the perfect respondent, but even so I’d like to make some observations.
If I was writing this story my first draft would look like this outlin:
Change your thinking, it’s a new paradigm: we don’t need to “fill” once a week: start thinking “top up a little” but whenever the car is idle – at work and esp. at home
If you have a home, then start first just using the plug in charger that came with the car, charge whenever you park and see if that works for you. ( warning – when the unit says “don’t use an extension lead” they mean it. Most leads are 10amp rated, and your charger will be 8 amps. I have seen a Tesla charger destroy one cheap lead, risking a fire. So your first investment is a 10A or even 15A power point near the car. Perhaps on its own circuit breaker)
Next level up is a single phase charger. You can buy these for $900 to $1200, but the fitting needs an electrician: An extra space on the MSBoard, a dedicated circuit, and an isolator ( big switch) So budget $2000, maybe less.
Apartment dwellers need a Body Corporate solution ( I have done only 2 of these). The challenge is that the meter supplying your apartment doesn’t run down to the garage. Only the Body Corporate has metered power to the common areas to supply lighting. So that means buying power from the BC, and that also means the additional cost of a meter, someone to read it and invoice for the electricity.
The next challenge is that the power supply to the garage is usually not much – just a few power points. Add to that a 3 phase 32 Amp charger to every car space, and make allowance for every car to start charging at 6pm and we are talking about a significant upgrade to the whole wiring.
Instead of setting up enough charging potential for every car space, maybe we can share? How about one or two double chargers in the visitor spaces? The chargers are fitted with card authorization and so each card holder can be invoiced monthly.
The trouble is in sharing. We lose visitor spaces, we need the BC to pay for a significant upgrade to the garage wiring. Do we have shared chargers with a card system? Do we allow only one model of Charger ( again with cards) or is it DIY, plus a metered supply to each garage space.
IF every owner has an EV, the discussion would still be intense, but when only 1 or two owners have an EV today, then getting all the necessary upgrades is a BC political nightmare.
As an actual PHEV owner I find it almost laughable when every EV review story stresses how long it will take to charge. No journalist has caught on to the paradigm shift that we no longer need to go the petrol station to “fill” every week.
There are 6,500 petrol stations in Australia, but there are about 180 million power points. That’s a game changer.
So change our thinking. Top up overnight. Top up while parked and forget about the inconvenience fo going to any sort of “filling point”
Ok there are exceptions – eg driving interstate, residences without access to a power point.
Personally I was just fine charging at home or work, using the small charger that came with the car. If I had a full EV, then a single overnight charge (12 hours) would have given me enough for 2 days of commuting.
When I upgraded my solar system and MSB I took the opportunity to upgrade to a 32 amp wall mounted charger, ready for my next car. The charger uses 4kW – so that’s the same as two large room heaters. When I’m home I try to use it only when the solar system has reached its export limit, so the energy is truly free – about 4 hrs / day. (there are Options to set this to automatic)
So a 32A wall mounted charger, run for 4 hrs would deliver for me, enough charge for 2 days of commuting. Run it for 12 hours Im at home and that’s 6 days of commuting.
I have used destination chargers at shopping centres - but only because they are free, I wasn’t waiting and frankly it was a convenient parking spot.
Which brings me to my second paradigm shift.
When I was with the oil industry (many years ago) we designed petrol stations to get customers in and out quickly as research told us that’s what they wanted.
That makes the move by Ampol to add fast chargers a look like a mistake. Who the heck wants to sit at a petrol station for 20 minutes?
Destinations with “entertainment” like shopping centres will be the natural EV charging locations. I can go there and have a coffee, banking, groceries and charge the car. Add a tyre pressure hose and I will never go to a petrol station ever again.
Come to think of it, its also an easy “fit” for Shopping Centres. Their business is to rent out space, charge tenants for their energy and cleaning, security etc, and to attract more traffic.
Anyone travelling looking forward a roadside stop to relieve the bladder, recharge the internal caffeine level or treat the family, might see advantage in topping up. Not necessarily long distance travel, but a weekend up or down the coast? The car parks at the fast food outlets that adjoin many main road servos are often bludging. The same might appeal at other likely places to stop for a short break.
Back on topic, charging at home is lowest cost off peak. The ultimate charging at work scheme might be the ability to transfer credit from your daytime home solar PV export to draw down at the same time to the workplace or car park charging station. Charging off peak after 10-11pm at night is also an option. Assuming the charger has a time based control option.
Stopping on a road trip sounds ok. I was referring more to the weekly running around town.
Peak charging changes the picture, but that’s non compulsory for residential so far. But when off peak is an option charging from say 10 pm to 6 am can be done with a timer or smart charger. Add a battery and we get to store solar or off peak power and consume when we want it … think of a battery as a time machine. Add to that the EV as a 65kwh storage unit that can supply the home and opportunities open up. But only for nerds like me. 97% of people don’t even understand their power bill, so management of a battery system and TOU charging is beyond them.
Back to the core question, this makes it even tougher for a Body Corporate, as they may be on peak, off peak already.
We would be a lot better off without freeloaders both bike and EV, pay your own expenses that will be massive, the whole incoming electricity supply would have to be upgraded at massive cost plus of course the outside transmission lines will also need an upgrade as well at the apartment owners cost.
In what way are such freeloaders and why will they be in future when EVs are much more common?
How do you know that?
Won’t they all have cars? The suggestion was I think for future construction to be ready to charge in basement carparks. I can see this feature being built in to apartment blocks and attracting buyers and tenants who want the convenience of overnight charging. In 20 years time people will whinge if their block doesn’t have the facility.
Even if say a body corporate for a unit complex allowed a resident to charge their vehicle on the common property power supply, it isn’t free. The body corporate still has to pay for it and all residents in the until complex would contribute to the increase electricity costs through higher body corporate levies. Is this fair, hardly, as one person gets substantially reduced (the amount paid would be 1 divided by the dwellings), while their neighbours pay more to allow those with EVs to receive a subsidised benefit.
This will occur and be necessary if EV become popular form of transportation. There has been much discussion in the network industry how to manage a substantial increase in movement over the network. This may be offset by only allowing charging outside peak times to maximise the network usage when there is free capacity…however, this will only be part of the solution as lower demand/free capacity occurs during night hours, and to a lesser extent during day hours (10-3pm). The challenge is charging is likely to be required during night hours which is problematic for cheap renewable energy, as there will need to be significant reliable network storage capacity to meet the relative increase in night usage.
The home PV solar industry has indicated that this can be covered by roof top solar and home batteries. Unfortunately there isn’t enough roof area to cater for both domestic use and vehicle charging unless there is a substantial reduction in current vehicle usage.
It will be interesting to see what solutions develop in the future, how they will function and the cost to the community.
How does that work when virtually every manufacturer has committed to make their offerings 100% non fossil fuel, some as early as 2025 for their changeovers to begin kicking in?
In 20 years we thankfully should be seeing the end of carbon burning dinosaurs of cars in mainstream use. They will just be for fossil fuel car enthusiasts playthings or a museum piece. The fuel needed to run them will be hopefully such a luxury item that it will limit use to very infrequent travel. There may even be a penalty cost applied for such use.
In fact there are newer Li batteries coming to vehicles that are rated as non-flammable. The sensational nature of the many anti EV pundits cries are based on older technology, until GM and Ford etc are totally EV producing I see a fossil fuel backed campaign to denigrate EVs over gas guzzlers.
One such newer battery already developed
I also see a need for faster charging or a renewable ICE fuel such as hydrogen for long distance transport, but these power supplies are coming. Most daily users are not long distance users but are more often smaller distances eg 50km or so a day. They can recharge in just a few hours everyday rather than the need to go for fast charging to 80% or for 0% to 100% everyday charging (this itself can be a killer of batteries).
Erratic electricity supply should also soon be almost a thing of the past. Storage of energy in the form of onsite and offsite batteries is gaining ground, as are solar, wind generation and other renewable sources of energy that then can then be stored… Climate Change is demanding that all societies have to move past a carbon based energy supply system. Manufacturers as you have noted are moving rapidly away from a fossil fuel past to a renewable energy future.
California now has a law for new housing that requires that renewable energy generation is built with the house. Why aren’t new developments here required to do so similarly? It would seem our political masters are not embracing it so legislation here lags way behind the reality of a need to change. It could be that those who benefit from fossil fuel linked sales spend money to put a brake on adoption of a renewable future to all of our peril.
