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[Sir Humphrey]

This item from ‘Strata News’ might be of interest.

https://www.lookupstrata.com.au/nsw-electric-vehicle-charging-in-strata-report/

 

It is a serious look at EV charging in strata properties. The link above provides links to three further documents, a slide presentation, a summary document and a 121 page report.

The report includes the results of surveys on what people want and what impediments there might be. 

It has example bylaws that could suit various circumstances. Note that in some jurisdictions in some circumstances it might not be necessary to go down the route of bylaws. In the ACT, for example, it may be possible to use Schedule 2.4. Our OC (class B, townhouses) recently passed an ordinary resolution of a general meeting which, among other things, said that the committee should approve adding a charging outlet in a parking space as a ‘minor use’ for those units that are immediately adjacent to their already-allocated, exclusive-use parking space on common property and are able to safely and practically connect the outlet back to the unit’s individual meter. 

 

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[Sir Humphrey]

The Wattblock report I mentioned above is a very useful contribution. There is a minor blooper on charging rates from ordinary power points that seems to suggest something was adapted from a US document – you get 240V x 10A = 2.4kW from an ordinary power point here, not 1.5kW. Aside from that, it is useful and generally consistent with what I would have said.
Where I live, various small groups of vehicles could charge in the units’ allocated parking spaces by hooking into space capacity at each of several owners corporation/common property meter cabinets. Those particular groups of vehicles unavoidably park too far from the individual meters of their associated units for it to be practical for them to charge from those individual units’ meters.
A question we have run into is whether a small number of separately metered outlets used exclusively for vehicle charging sitting behind an Owners Corporation (OC) meter amounts to an ’embedded network’. I wrote to the Australian Energy Regulator (AER). They confirmed that we don’t need a retail exemption for supply to an EV, even though the OC would bill the unit owners on a cost-recovery basis for what they have added to the OC’s electricity costs. This does not count as retail if we are supplying vehicles, not premises. On the other hand, they seemed to think we needed a network exemption but they could not tell me what category of exemption. The said I should get legal advice.
The Wattblock report mentioned embedded networks in strata properties where units are supplied and EVs might be added but not in the context of just EVs, separately metered, behind an owners corporation meter with no linkage of any sort to the supply to the units. I spoke to one of the principals at Wattblock hoping they might have had some authoritative advice on network exemptions. He said he could not give me legal advice but also seemed to believe that we needed neither network nor retail exemptions.
JT, do you, or anyone else reading this, know of examples of EV charging in any strata properties that match my situation? i.e. metered cost-recovery supply just to vehicles in allocated spaces from power outlets sitting behind an OC meter? If so, I would like to get in touch with them to see if they had any legal advice.

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