How to be EV ready in your Strata Building

With the rising popularity of EVs, it’s essential for strata communities to create an environment that supports sustainable transportation, including electric vehicles (EVs). In this article we address the key issues that strata buildings need to think about and and step-by-step guide to becoming EV Ready.

New Regulations about EV charging in strata buildings

Effective October 2023, the Australian National Construction Code will require all new strata building developments to be EV ready for each parking bay in their development [1]. That’s fine for new strata buildings where developers and builders can do this during the build process.

But what about existing strata buildings where you need to retrofit to provide EV charging infrastructure? What are the considerations you need to think about? There’s so much information spinning around, so we’ve put together this step by step guide for strata and building managers

Being “EV ready” or “EV readiness” means that a building is suitably equipped with the necessary infrastructure to accommodate and charge electric vehicles (EVs). So let’s explore this further and what you need to think about to be EV ready for your existing strata building.

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What are the key EV challenges for Strata Buildings?

Existing strata buildings and their owners corporations encounter a new challenge with the accelerating adoption of EVs Parking areas in existing buildings need to be retrofitted to provide for EV infrastructure….We’ve surveyed many of our Strata and building manager clients, and they have these key concerns.

• Limited Parking Spaces

One of the primary concerns in strata building communities is the scarcity of parking spots. Allocating dedicated EV charging parking spots within this already scarce resource is a challenge. Strata buildings and owners corporations need to find creative solutions. For example, using underutilized areas, optimizing parking space utilization, or considering shared EV charging bays.

• ICEing

Strata buildings already face significant challenges around unauthorised drivers parking in visitor parking bays. And with dedicated EV charging bays, they are very concerned that this behaviour will transfer. So that the potential for  ICEing, which is when any vehicle parks in an EV charging bay and is not actively charging. What if dedicated EV charging bays are then used for general parking and drivers who really need to charge cannot? What can they do? It’s a very similar problem to unauthorised drivers parking in visitor parking bays. 

• Electrical Infrastructure Upgrades

When you provide EV charging facilities, you need to be able to allocate and measure power consumption in a different way. Existing buildings are not wired up for this, and in most cases, existing buildings will need to upgrade their electrical infrastructure to support it. This may range from a minor upgrade, to something far more significant, depending on the size and age of the existing building. As well as the building’s power consumption load.. This can involve assessing the capacity of the existing electrical system, identifying potential limitations, and implementing necessary upgrades.

• Cost Allocation and Billing

You need to work out how to bill and allocate costs for EV charging and this is not always a simple thing to do.. Strata buildings and their owners corporations  need to establish fair and transparent methods for sharing the costs associated with installing and maintaining charging infrastructure. Often this will be the responsibility of the strata manager. You will need to consider things like individual usage, shared common expenses, and methods for reimbursing the strata corporation for electricity consumption.

• Balancing Resident Needs

Strata communities must strike a balance between the needs of EV owners and non-EV owners. While the owners corporation will want to provide enough EVcharging spots for residents. But it needs to do that without compromising the parking available for non-EV vehicles. And this means you need to plan thoughtfully, thinking about the future.. We’ve found that when an owners corporation engages in  resident surveys, and collaborative open communication, you can work out an optimal balance among all groups much more reasonably. 

• Regulatory and Compliance Considerations

As an owners corporation of a strata building, you also need to navigate regulatory requirements and compliance standards for EV charging infrastructure.This includes the  local building codes, Council regulations, electrical codes,  and safety and fire regulations It’s really important to engage with expert advice, and a number of local councils, and regulatory bodies are providing a lot of information on how to navigate this. 

You need to address each of the  challenges with EV charging proactively. And the best thing you can do is plan proactively, collaborate and look for innovative solutions. 

By embracing EV readiness and providing convenient and accessible charging infrastructure, as a strata building you are improving liveability and services in your building. But on top of that, you are contributing to a sustainable and environmentally friendly community. 

What steps should a strata building follow to be EV ready?

Step 1: Educate your strata community on the benefits of  EVs

As a preliminary step on your journey to becoming EV ready, it’s important to share the value of EVs within your strata community. Educating the strata members about the benefits of EVs. For example, you could  create a community forum, which shares valuable information about EVs, such as their positive contribution to net zero and the environment, as well as their cost saving advantages. With net zero obligations fast approaching, it’s important to get residents onboard about their environmental consciousness, and how EVs can make a significant contribution. 

To help your residents understand EV readiness and sustainable mobility. Encourage your community to be involved so they have a sense of shared responsibility by: providing resources and holding informational sessions and worskhopss 

Step 2: Assess Your Strata Building’s  Needs

Before throwing yourselves all in to install EV chargers, we recommend you do some preliminary legwork. A first step in this is to find out what the specific needs of your strata community around EVs and EV charging are. The easiest way to do this is to conduct surveys. The types of things you would ask questions about include:

• Parking availability
• Existing electrical infrastructure
• How many car owners are there?
• Do residents drive EVs now? If so, how many?
• What is the electrical capacity and load of the building now?
• How much spare power capacity does the building have available for EV charging?
• What demand is there for EV charging now? And how much demand for EV charging do you expect going forward.

Asking these types of questions will give you very valuable insights. Around behaviours and patterns of your building residents. With this information in hand, you can then start the next stage of planning your tailored strategy that meets the unique requirements for your strata building.

As this does involve quite a lot of information gathering, you may want to appoint a sub-committee of the Owners’ Corporation to be responsible for this. 

Step 3: Plan and Design EV Infrastructure:

So after you’ve conducted your survey, and scoped out what you think your building will need over the next period of time to be EV ready, you’ll now need to get the experts in. There are numerous specialists in EV infrastructure planning and design, but it will generally involve electrical engineers, but also likely some other types as well. By seeking out the right experts, you’ll streamline the planning and design phase. 

They will help you address issues like:

• Metered circuit boards
• load management, 
• best types of chargers, 
• billing systems, 
• optimal installation locations, 
• safety and accessibility
• Charging speed
• Compatibility of chargers/ cables with different EV types
• Ability to accommodate future scalability
• New technologies
• Battery storage
• Electrical tracking or busways systems
• Compliance certifications
• Council approvals if any required

Step 4: Establishing Policies and Guidelines:

You should develop clear and comprehensive policies and guidelines to ensure smooth operation of your EV charging infrastructure. For example, if you only have a few parking spaces that you can use for EV charging, then you should have a policy or system around making sure people can have fair access. This might be through something like parking bollards  to make sure people can book an EV charging bay for when they need it. But also it stops people using it for a general parking bay, or ICE’ing the spot

Other  things you should consider are What does responsible charging behaviour look like? If an EV has 80% charge or more, should they be able to use the EV bay to “top up” to 100% if someone else hasn’t got enough charge? Have you thought about how you’re going to charge for the power drawn from EV chargers on common property? Do you have a system in place for this? What about ICE’ing in EV charging bays? How will you stop people doing this? Are there penalties that should be enforced? It’s important to set these policies out early on.  Being transparent and communicating clearly to your strata residents around your EV charging policy, will make it a much more harmonious environment, and it’s far more likely to result in streamlining the EV charging process.

Step 5: Install and deploy your EV chargers; circulate operating manuals; ensure compliance certifications

• Finding the right EV supplier: You should decide if you want to use an independent electrical contractor or a specialist EV charging operator. 
• Getting preliminary advice: Consider examples from other buildings that have installed chargers. If your upgrade is large or complicated, engage a specialist independent EV charging consultant. 
• Seeking requests for proposals:
  • Owners corporation: ask EV charging operators to provide detailed quotes based on written specifications 
  • Tenant or owner: contact several suppliers to provide you with quotes and solutions that will meet your charging needs. 
• Installation of the EV charging infrastructure:
  • Owners corporation: once you have approval from the owners corporation, engage your selected supplier to install your selected infrastructure; engage your building manager about time frames to minimise any inconveniences for residents. 
  • Tenant or owner: once you have approval from the owners corporation, engage your selected supplier to install EV supply equipment; advise your building manager about time frames to minimise any inconveniences for other residents. 

Here are templates that you can use to share in your Strata Communities to maximise the resources and establish policies in your building. [1] [2] [3]

Step 6: Monitoring and Maintenance

You should establish a system for monitoring and maintaining the EV charging infrastructure. Regularly assess the performance of charging stations, address technical issues promptly, and ensure optimal charging experiences of your residents. You should monitor charging usage, identify trends, and make necessary adjustments to optimize resource utilization. This can be done through various software tools and platforms now available in the EV charging world. You can either ask your building or facilities manager to do it. Or perhaps if you’re in a smaller building, someone on the owners corporation will volunteer to do it.

By following this step-by-step guide, strata communities can navigate the journey of becoming EV ready. It provides a structured approach, ensuring that all necessary aspects, from infrastructure assessment to maintenance, are addressed. Ultimately, the guide empowers strata communities to create a supportive environment for EV owners and contribute to a sustainable future.

Put your best foot forward to be EV ready! 

Issues such as parking are a very common pain point of every strata building. Stress around unfair parking practices and EV charging results in strata owners conflicts and could divide your community. As strata manager or owners corporation, you should consider all these above factors, to see what’s the best outcome for your building and residents.  

At thatsMYspot, we’ve been able to help strata buildings solve parking pain points for years with our parking bollard systems. Now with EVs, the solution makes a lot of sense as well, and we are helping educate the strata community with our helpful guides. Check out our EV Charging Procurement Guide blog and infographic as well. [1]

 Our solutions of smart bollards in Australia, have been very helpful for the strata community in cities such as Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and in Canberra. And for the easy of use and access, so many strata buildings select our  automatic parking bollards to resolve  parking nightmares.  And more recently our smart parking solutions have been very effective to stop ICE’ing of EV charging bays. So, If you’re ready to take your strata community’s parking to the next level, contact us. We will help you assess   smart parking solutions to help share access to EV chargers on common property fairly. 

This information is based on a variety of sources, including NSW Government’s “Making your residential strata building EV ready” guide which can be found here [1] [2].