12 year journey to EV charging in private bay in strata

Sometimes things take time in strata. The pace at which things occur can be called 'glacial' and I've even heard a description of strata processes as being similar to moving at the speed of 'continental drift'. This is the 12 year journey to EV charging in a private bay in strata, from someone who has worked in the EV charging in strata industry for the past 11 years....

​I first test drove an electric vehicle in 2014 and met some of the early adopter EV drivers in Sydney, some of who were having issues getting their electric vehicles charged in their apartment building. In 2015, I went to San Francisco to see one of the first EV charging systems for apartment buildings, developed by a U.S. startup called Evercharge.

1st charge of the Electric vehicle using a Nox Energy IPS and an MSI EVgo charging cable at private carspace in 2026

Then in 2017, our company was given a grant by the City of Sydney to research what it would take for 20 different Sydney CBD strata buildings to install EV charging. We also surveyed over 700 residents from 80 residential strata buildings to understand their attitudes towards EV charging. We were surprised how positive the people we surveyed were.

In 2021, the NSW Government approached us to try to find a candidate strata building for them to test out a grant program where the NSW Government would co-fund installation of an EV charging 'backbone' into a strata building. We introduced them to Richmont at Pyrmont, which went on to become the pilot site for a future grants program. At the same time, Tesla approached us as they were looking for 2 strata buildings which they could test installation of their Generation 3 EV charger into and we assisted them with that, with Richmont (Pyrmont) and Zinc (Alexandria) being the beneficiaries of that collaboration.

In 2020 during the lockdowns, we started recording videos on EV charging in strata and put them on our youtube channel. We also developed an EV Charging Readiness for strata online training course.

In 2022, I was given the opportunity to drive a Tesla Model S for an entire year. My primary way of charging was to use the Tesla superchargers at a local shopping centre which was 15 minutes drive away. I spent a lot of time waiting in the shopping centre for the charging to finish that year. My backup plan in an emergency was that I had signed an agreement with my own strata building to plug in to a single power outlet in the visitors carpark and manually record the kWh and re-imburse the Owners Corporation for the electricity via a direct debit on a quarterly basis. However, this wasn't great as the visitor space could be blocked at any time by another car being parked there. Also, sometimes the weight of the 10amp charging cable would cause the three prong power outlet to fall out mid charging so I ended up wrapping the charging cable around a nearby water pipe to stop this happening.

Tesla Model S charging off common property power outlet behind visitor parking space in 2022

​In 2023, the NSW Government launched $10m EV charging Infrastructure grants for residential strata schemes, providing up to 80% co-funding for strata schemes. We ran a number of independent tenders for residential strata schemes (and even precincts of up to 6 strata schemes co-located together) to compare 3 EV charging infrastructure quotes from different installers, for the purpose of helping the strata scheme to get the EV Charging grant. We were surprised at how few strata schemes could get the project approved internally in their strata scheme, even when there was a very generous grant scheme from the NSW government.

I knew my strata building wasn't ready for spending anything on EV charging infrastructure at this point, even if the NSW government had offered to pay 80% of a $100,000 project, we would not have been able to mobilise the remaining $20,000. We had a $250,000 lift modernisation project pending and only one electric vehicle parked in the building for 40 lots. We had old electricity meters. We had no communications network in the basement carpark. We had old circuit breakers on the house sub-board. Some battles aren't worth fighting for. 

In 2023, we came across a startup company from Canada which was doing a low power QR code activated power outlet for EV charging. While it wasn't certified for commercial use in Australia, they posted one of these devices out to us and we installed it and tested it and liked the concept. There was a U.S. startup doing this type of solution as well, but we couldn't test theirs out as they didn't have a version which could work with the 3 prong australian power outlet, as it was an integrated unit.

Test version of Plugzio QR code activated power outlet installed in Bondi Junction strata in 2023

In 2024, a set of Australian startups entered the QR code activated low power ev charging space to provide local versions of the international products we had seen earlier on. Nox Energy, Alchemy Charge, Ready Steady Plug, Ohmie Go, Combined Energy and Powerlogger are six local Australian companies operating in this space.

​In 2025 my strata building completed the Lift Modernisation project, which meant there was some bandwidth to look at EV charging again. The Federal agency, ARENA, had given a $1.61m grant to Nox Energy to subsidize EV low power EV charging into 2,000 strata carspaces. (ARENA would follow later in 2026 and give another $1.5m grant to Ready Steady Plug to subsidize the installation of smart distribution boards into strata schemes for the purpose of low power ev charging).

When I had plugged the Tesla Model S into the visitor carparking space, I had gotten 8-10 amp charging, which was giving me the equivalent of getting about 10kM of range added into the vehicle for every hour of charging. This is just a trickle charge.

By being less ambitious on the charging speed I personally wanted and encouraging my own strata building to try out low power QR code activated ev charging as a short term to medium term solution for ev charging, we made some headway in 2026. In 2025 Gigacomm had installed fibre to the basement in our building and installed a modem and router and unlimited high speed broadband account for use of the Owners Corporation, in return for us letting them install their equipment connected to our common power. That meant we had a wi-fi network providing full coverage to one level of basement carpark and partial coverage to the second level of basement carpark.

With the federal government subsidy, we were able to replace 4 existing common property power outlets (2 in basement 1 and 2 in basement 2) which included the original power outlet I had charged the Tesla Model S from in the visitor parking spot. To be eligible for the federal subsidy we had to install 5 QR code activated power outlets so we added a second one into the visitor parking spots. This meant that we had 4 carspaces in visitor parking which could have a charging cable safely run to 2 QR code activated power outlets. 4 out of the 5 QR Code activated power outlets were installed within range of our Gigacomm wi-fi for under $3,000. A tenant who owned a BYD Seal started charging at one of these in the visitor carparking area every 2nd night.

The next step was for me to get permission from my strata scheme to daisy chain a private low power QR code activated power outlet (coming off a nearby QR Code activated power outlet energised by the common power circuit). I paid for a conduit run of about 10m and installation of a Nox IPS at my own private space. Unfortunately, this was out of range of wi-fi and there were other EV owners on basement 2 carpark who were out of range of wi-fi who wanted to install low power ev charging in their private bays. Our Owners Corporation agreed to spend $160 installing a normal GPO daisy chained off an existing circuit in the basement 2 carpark at a sufficient height that a wi-fi repeater plugged into this could extend wi-fi range to the bottom basement carpark. The Chairperson of the strata, who doesn't have an EV himself, donated an old wi-fi repeater ($30) and installed it to provide coverage of wi-fi to the remaining basement 2 carparking spots including my spot, where my private QR code activated power outlet was installed.

So, after 12 years and the Owners Corporation spending less than $3,000 and myself spending about $1,000 on a private conduit run and a QR code activated power outlet, I had a solution which would charge an electric vehicle at 8amps. The first charging session took about 7 hours to top up the battery after driving the first 64 km's in the car. It wasn't fast. After doing a firmware update into the MSI charging cable and working out an unintuitive UX on the MSI EVgo app, I was able to do a charging session at 10amps and then finally at 15amps.  This was a cheap way to get EV charging installed which charges at half the speed of the alternative, single phase Level 2 EV charging at 32 amps. At 15amps single phase, I'll get up to 21km of range into the vehicle each hour.

Our strata building now has 4 electric vehicles from 40 apartments with a 5th on the way. 2 more lot owners have gotten strata approval to do private bay EV charging with the same method of daisy chaining QR code activated power outlets off existing circuits. 

2 x low power QR code activate power outlets daisy chained off the same 20amp circuit, 15amps on 15 minute round robin charging if they both plug in at the same time

​We understand that NECA has approved multiple low power EV chargepoints coming off the same circuits as long as they are load managed. We have 4 circuits which low power EV charging is current connected to. This is NOT the final solution for everyone in the building to do ev charging. It is the right now solution to allow the earlier adopters of EV's in our building to charge at a reasonable cost and provide 15amp low power EV charging (on 15 minute round robin if necessary). If an EV owner is the only one charging on their circuit, this will give the initial owners 21km of range for each hour of charging.

Further information on this install was part of a Climate Action Week SYD26 webinar hosted by Willoughby Council "Powering Better Apartments: EV Charging and Energy Efficiency in Action".

Brent Clark
​Contributor, Strata Energy News