EV Readiness for Strata - Section 6 - Individual Lot or Common Area Meter Connection
A number of strata schemes have already allowed an individual EV Owner to connect an EV charger to their private electricity meter. This is technically possible even if the Lot Owner has an analogue electricity meter. However, the question remains, is this the best long term approach to providing EV charging to everyone who may need it in the building at the lowest cost?
There will necessarily be some debate in your apartment building over this. Typically, the owner of a new EV just wants to get their chargepoint in as fast as possible at the fastest charging speed possible. They aren't interested in waiting for the strata committee to deliberate what might be the best EV charging roadmap and capital works plan for EV charging over the next 10 years. In St Leonards, an owner ran a cable from their apartment meter on the 7th floor down to the basement carpark to charge their EV.
Here are some Pros and Cons of each approach.
Pros of Connecting an EV Chargepoint to an Individual Lot Electricity Meter
-Individual lot owner can choose to buy any chargepoint from any EV manufacturer
-No external billing party is required to recover costs of EV charging from EV owners and deposit funds into strata bank account
-Charging speed e.g. single phase 32amps (Note: Most individual lots in strata have single phase electricity meters, not three phase meters)
Cons of Connecting an EV Chargepoint to an Individual Lot Electricity Meter
-In a majority of cases, three phase 32 amp charging will not be available on individual lot electricity meters
-If the apartment meter is not on the same floor as the carparking area, then there are potentially fire re-sealing and fire re-certification costs for every floor which the cable to the electric vehicle passes through
-May need to hire electrician to rebalance apartment meters across different phases depending on the order in which electric vehicles arrive at the building
-May not be able to easily use active load balancing and may have to rely more heavily on scheduled load balancing (i.e. off peak hours)
-May involve messy cost recovery for "buy-in of share of hardware load balancer" and ongoing maintenance costs of hardware load balancer(s) for initial and consecutive EV owners if the Owners Corporation doesn't want to contribute funds to the cost of the load balancer and multiple load balancers need to be purchased for different apartment meter boards spread throughout the building
-If the apartment meter is in a cabinet on one of the floors of the building, fire resealing may be needed for every floor that an electrical cable passes through to get to the basement carpark
-Owners Corporation can’t manage EV charging as a service and upgrade all EV charging to newer technology (e.g. software based priority load balancing) as it arrives. Once a Lot Owner has approval to connect to a private meter, they can't be asked to spend more money to join a communal charging system, unless this is specified in a by-law prior to their individual meter install
-Solar powered EV charging is not possible in most cases
Pros of Connecting an EV Chargepoint to an Common Area/Houselights Electricity Meter
-Fastest charging available in the building at certain times of day if capacity allows it e.g. three phase 32 amp
-Typically, no fire resealing or fire re-certification costs
-Support multiple electric vehicles per lot for those with 2 carspaces
-Charge any EV anytime at variable speeds, not just in scheduled offpeak hours
-Easier to implement active load balancing with CT clamps on house power to measure consumption in real time and augment capacity "bandwidth" available for EV charging
-Easy to access software load balancing via house Wi-Fi avoiding the need to install hardware load balancing infrastructure (e.g. save $4,000 - $30,000 or more)
-Access priority load balancing in the future e.g. software leans the driving patterns of all the electric vehicles during weekly cycles and optimizes charging based upon user profiles that are built up e.g. Lot owner 2 drives most on a Monday so give them charging at a faster speed (30 amps) than Lot Owner 1 (10 amps)
There will necessarily be some debate in your apartment building over this. Typically, the owner of a new EV just wants to get their chargepoint in as fast as possible at the fastest charging speed possible. They aren't interested in waiting for the strata committee to deliberate what might be the best EV charging roadmap and capital works plan for EV charging over the next 10 years. In St Leonards, an owner ran a cable from their apartment meter on the 7th floor down to the basement carpark to charge their EV.
Here are some Pros and Cons of each approach.
Pros of Connecting an EV Chargepoint to an Individual Lot Electricity Meter
-Individual lot owner can choose to buy any chargepoint from any EV manufacturer
-No external billing party is required to recover costs of EV charging from EV owners and deposit funds into strata bank account
-Charging speed e.g. single phase 32amps (Note: Most individual lots in strata have single phase electricity meters, not three phase meters)
Cons of Connecting an EV Chargepoint to an Individual Lot Electricity Meter
-In a majority of cases, three phase 32 amp charging will not be available on individual lot electricity meters
-If the apartment meter is not on the same floor as the carparking area, then there are potentially fire re-sealing and fire re-certification costs for every floor which the cable to the electric vehicle passes through
-May need to hire electrician to rebalance apartment meters across different phases depending on the order in which electric vehicles arrive at the building
-May not be able to easily use active load balancing and may have to rely more heavily on scheduled load balancing (i.e. off peak hours)
-May involve messy cost recovery for "buy-in of share of hardware load balancer" and ongoing maintenance costs of hardware load balancer(s) for initial and consecutive EV owners if the Owners Corporation doesn't want to contribute funds to the cost of the load balancer and multiple load balancers need to be purchased for different apartment meter boards spread throughout the building
-If the apartment meter is in a cabinet on one of the floors of the building, fire resealing may be needed for every floor that an electrical cable passes through to get to the basement carpark
-Owners Corporation can’t manage EV charging as a service and upgrade all EV charging to newer technology (e.g. software based priority load balancing) as it arrives. Once a Lot Owner has approval to connect to a private meter, they can't be asked to spend more money to join a communal charging system, unless this is specified in a by-law prior to their individual meter install
-Solar powered EV charging is not possible in most cases
Pros of Connecting an EV Chargepoint to an Common Area/Houselights Electricity Meter
-Fastest charging available in the building at certain times of day if capacity allows it e.g. three phase 32 amp
-Typically, no fire resealing or fire re-certification costs
-Support multiple electric vehicles per lot for those with 2 carspaces
-Charge any EV anytime at variable speeds, not just in scheduled offpeak hours
-Easier to implement active load balancing with CT clamps on house power to measure consumption in real time and augment capacity "bandwidth" available for EV charging
-Easy to access software load balancing via house Wi-Fi avoiding the need to install hardware load balancing infrastructure (e.g. save $4,000 - $30,000 or more)
-Access priority load balancing in the future e.g. software leans the driving patterns of all the electric vehicles during weekly cycles and optimizes charging based upon user profiles that are built up e.g. Lot owner 2 drives most on a Monday so give them charging at a faster speed (30 amps) than Lot Owner 1 (10 amps)
-Delay electrical infrastructure upgrade for the longest period of time and sweat existing capacity of the houselights circuit
-Avoid interruption to individual apartment electricity supply if EV charging trips individual apartment’s breaker
-Individual apartment owner doesn’t have to manually think about managing A/C, dryer, washing machine, EV charging load during peak periods e.g. summertime
-Ability to provide solar powered EV charging if a solar system is connected to the common area meter
-Ability to use a power monitoring device to detect when solar feed-in is occurring and divert this solar-feed-in to charging electric vehicles
Cons of Connecting an EV Chargepoint to an Common Area/Houselights Electricity Meter
-Slower maximum charging speed at certain times if active or dynamic load balancing dictates a slower charging speed for a period of time
-External billing company charges transaction fee for billing/cost recovery (e.g. 1% transaction fee up at the bottom end and up to $330 per carspace p.a. for billing fees + hardware load balancer fees)
-May need to pass by-law that all EV owners buy the same chargepoint so they can seamlessly operate in a network together e.g. OCPP1.6j compliant and above chargepoint
-May need to setup house internet account
-May need to install Wi-Fi access points and repeaters throughout carpark area or add additional network connection boxes for every 30 EV's which are charging if using datacables to connect to EV chargepoints
-May need to install electricity monitoring device on 3 phases of houselights meter and 3 phases of main incomer
What about installing new electricity meters specifically for EV charging?
There may be instances where installing a new electricity meter, which is NMI pattern approved, specifically for connecting charge stations may be investigated by a strata building. It would not usually be feasible for individual apartments to install new electricity meters specifically for their EV charging, as this would require provision of new meterboards, which would have to be financed by the Owners Corporation. However, many strata buildings have had separate electricity meters installed and payed for by third parties for specific services being provided into the building such as common laundries, electric hot water plants or NBN. Some third party EV chargepoint installers and some embedded network companies providing EV charging as a service, may offer to install a new electricity meter for ALL EV charging in the building. Also, if your building has multiple meterboards and if an apartment meterboard is close to a carparking area, in some cases you may want to investigate getting an additional common area meter installed onto that apartment meterboard for the purposes of EV charging.
Summing it all up
Above are some of the questions which should be discussed by the strata committee, before passing a by-law for an individual EV owner to install an EV chargepoint. There are vendor preferences (e.g. favourite electrical contractor, number of Tesla EV owners versus other EV brand owners within the building) which will impact the development of an EV charging roadmap in your strata building. The important thing is that the conversation is had and that individual strata committee members get the full picture, not a truncated picture, before voting on a particular pathway.
For this reason, you may want to watch this 7 minute video on Strata Committees and Complex Decision making which is here.
-Avoid interruption to individual apartment electricity supply if EV charging trips individual apartment’s breaker
-Individual apartment owner doesn’t have to manually think about managing A/C, dryer, washing machine, EV charging load during peak periods e.g. summertime
-Ability to provide solar powered EV charging if a solar system is connected to the common area meter
-Ability to use a power monitoring device to detect when solar feed-in is occurring and divert this solar-feed-in to charging electric vehicles
Cons of Connecting an EV Chargepoint to an Common Area/Houselights Electricity Meter
-Slower maximum charging speed at certain times if active or dynamic load balancing dictates a slower charging speed for a period of time
-External billing company charges transaction fee for billing/cost recovery (e.g. 1% transaction fee up at the bottom end and up to $330 per carspace p.a. for billing fees + hardware load balancer fees)
-May need to pass by-law that all EV owners buy the same chargepoint so they can seamlessly operate in a network together e.g. OCPP1.6j compliant and above chargepoint
-May need to setup house internet account
-May need to install Wi-Fi access points and repeaters throughout carpark area or add additional network connection boxes for every 30 EV's which are charging if using datacables to connect to EV chargepoints
-May need to install electricity monitoring device on 3 phases of houselights meter and 3 phases of main incomer
What about installing new electricity meters specifically for EV charging?
There may be instances where installing a new electricity meter, which is NMI pattern approved, specifically for connecting charge stations may be investigated by a strata building. It would not usually be feasible for individual apartments to install new electricity meters specifically for their EV charging, as this would require provision of new meterboards, which would have to be financed by the Owners Corporation. However, many strata buildings have had separate electricity meters installed and payed for by third parties for specific services being provided into the building such as common laundries, electric hot water plants or NBN. Some third party EV chargepoint installers and some embedded network companies providing EV charging as a service, may offer to install a new electricity meter for ALL EV charging in the building. Also, if your building has multiple meterboards and if an apartment meterboard is close to a carparking area, in some cases you may want to investigate getting an additional common area meter installed onto that apartment meterboard for the purposes of EV charging.
Summing it all up
Above are some of the questions which should be discussed by the strata committee, before passing a by-law for an individual EV owner to install an EV chargepoint. There are vendor preferences (e.g. favourite electrical contractor, number of Tesla EV owners versus other EV brand owners within the building) which will impact the development of an EV charging roadmap in your strata building. The important thing is that the conversation is had and that individual strata committee members get the full picture, not a truncated picture, before voting on a particular pathway.
For this reason, you may want to watch this 7 minute video on Strata Committees and Complex Decision making which is here.
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Strata Committees and Complex Decision Making
Join us walking through the factors that have to be considered when strata committees attempt to make complex decisions. Watch on Youtube |