Common electricity use

Scott13 – I can’t see electric motor vehicles becoming a cost-effective proposition any time soon so perhaps your Owners Corporation (O/C) is being just a little over-cautious, and whilst I’m not sure why residential carparks have power outlets I’ll bet there’s a Building Code or similar that requires them to be fitted and to be accessible.

So I’m not sure that lockable power outlets would comply with whatever Code requires their presence, but perhaps suggest to your O/C that upon application it charges residents an annual fee for a key to specific outlet/s, with that fee being reflective of the both the anticipated electricity usage/cost and a “convenience” factor to the key-holder, both annually reviewable.

If you want this type of approach formalised, then why not suggest that yours be a test case, and then put a Motion in that regard on the Agenda for your next General Meeting.

To conclude… this may be a bit left-field, but IF there’s a power point adjacent to every carspace, then I wonder if they’re wired back to the supply serving the individual Lot/s concerned; and electrician could determine this.

Think it would be highly unlikely that the power points in a basement parking area would be part of a lot’s power supply.  That would involve more complex and expensive cabling, something the builder would be likely to avoid. 

I’ve heard  of cases where owners have run freezer cabinets in underground garages taking their power from OC supplies.   Those appliances could easily cost in excess of $300 in electricity per annum, nice if you can get an unsuspecting strata plan to pay for it.

Easy enough to check it out, without the services of an electrician,  if you turn off your unit’s main switch, and the power stays on in the car parking area, then you’re using either OC supply or that of someone else.

@Whale said:
Scott13 – I can’t see electric motor vehicles becoming a cost-effective proposition any time soon…

Huh?! I’ve been happily driving my DIY-converted electric car for almost 6 years. For the last 18 months we have had a commercial electric car as well. The cost to run the cars is less than any petrol car available. Maintenance is less also. The ex-demo Mitsubishi iMiEV, virtually new, cost $24K. Now you can buy the ones that have come back from 3 year lease with low milage for about $16-17K. 

Electric vehicle charging will be an issue for strata properties soon enough. I was lucky that a neighbour with his unit close to our shared parking space was happy to let me charge on a line from his unit. We have a subsidiary meter in his meter box so we can both see what I have added to his bill. Every six months I give him a few hundred dollars to cover the fuel cost of all our city driving.

Meanwhile, we have another power point on the OC’s circuit next to an unallocated parking spot. We pointed it out to all residents in a newsletter as a handy facility for unit owners so they would go there to vacuum out their cars rather than driving across the grass to get close to their units. The amount of power that anyone could take is trivial unless they were plugged in for hours day after day.  An inappropriate use such as routinely charging an electric car would soon become obvious. 

Peter.

Purely by coincidence, I have just taken a job to write an information sheet for Owners Corps regarding the installation of electrical chargers for cars.

I won’t go into any more detail but two things occur.  

[A comment I made here about “not plugging your car in like an electric kettle” turned out to be incorrect (See Peter C’s post #10 below) so I have edited it out.]

There are plenty of other ways they could control this and still allow people to charge their cars (and pay for the electricity they use).

My other point is that I read somewhere recently that a council with a high number of retirees in its area is now insisting that strata schemes have recharging points for electric scooters. 

The world is changing …

@Whale said:
You’re amazing Peter – you never fail to add-value to discussions here especially (like all of us) around your pet topics,

Thanks

but for the record, when reviewing the Mitsubishi iMiEV, one of our largest motoring organisations concluded that “compared with a similar petrol powered small car, the MiEV is $30k more expensive…

I agree it was too expensive at its initial price of $48K but at the price you can get them now $16-24K they are no longer $30K more expensive. 

A Nissan Leaf is in the $30,000s. Now, in the $40,000s you can get a Mitsubishi plug in hybrid outlander: Two electric motors for front and rear wheels, enough battery range to do most city driving fully electric but long range with petrol too. 

Making provision for EV charging will soon enough be an issue.

Jimmy, can I suggest you run your draft information sheet by me? As it happens, for many EVs you do actually “…just plug a car in like a kettle…”.  The analogy is apt because kettles are often rated at 2400W and many cars have their built in charger running at the same wattage. Sometimes the charging cord (strictly an ‘EVSE’) is supplied with a 15A plug even though the draw is no more than 10A.

“You need special transformers to be installed so the pre-emptive strike on electrical sockets by the Owners Corps in the first post is a bit pointless.”

Yes, there is specialised equipment required for a fast charger but most people most of the time when charging at home will find they are happy with the 10A or 15A standard outlet. 

The standard power point is the lowest common denominator of charge points. All electric cars can use them even while having provision for faster charging from dedicated outlets. For home charging, fast charging is usually not necessary. Fast charging is mainly useful for enabling intercity driving and for (say) delivery vehicles that might keep returning to a depot. 

I agree a simple meter like the one Jimmy linked to may well be sufficient, especially while EVs are not common. That is what I have on a line from a neighbour’s unit that is conveniently next to our shared parking area. That works while my neighbour’s electricity tariff is flat rate. If there had been a way to have the line run back to my unit’s meter box I would have preferred that. I am on a time of use tariff (voluntarily) so I can run mostly discretionary loads such as the electric boost for solar hot water or the dishwasher on off-peak most of the time and save some money while having the option if necessary to run them any time. It would be nice to charge the cars that way too; usually on cheaper off peak but able to charge at any time if I need to. It is not really a big deal since an electric car is cheap to run anyway but the time of use tariff would save me enough money for an extra meal out occasionally. 

In my building of about 130 lots, there is a power point on each pillar in the car park and that works out to about one power point for every six spaces.

The power point running off lot electricity is much more likely to occur in a small scheme where units have direct access to their parking spaces or garages.  

The original post was about the EC arbitrarily deciding to lock all common property power points. 

Scott13 said…. It appears the ‘Committee’ are considering that owners may apply to have a ‘Sub-meter and powerpoint’ connected from the Common Area powerpoint. ..How expensive that’ll be I have no idea.

I often wonder how things turn out with regard to issues discussed here, so thanks for the feedback Scott.

One of our extended family has recently constructed a secondary dwelling (granny flat) on their property, so I just contacted them to find out about how they’ve metered the water and electricity.

Water usage is irrelevant in your situation, but their electrician supplied and installed a single phase sub-meter on the electricity supply that feeds the new dwelling for $105.00.

I’m not an electrician, but apparently the device incorporates a “fusible link”, and is therefore installed wherever that item (?) would normally be located on the primary electrical supply board. 

Hopefully that answers your question about the likely costs of your E/C doing that; thanks again for the feedback.