Eyes on the Road: Peak Strata Body Releases EV Charging State of Play Report

NAT
Sustainability
question
Lookupstrata community member

In a building, three electric vehicle owners were given approval to install their personal EV charging stations in their bay. Would the chargers have some built in demand management control?

answer
Drew McKillican
Drew McKillican Altogether Group

If you're thinking about EV charging, you need to have the ability to control and manage that charging system.

That's the critical issue with these AC accelerated charges. They're the chargers that are being sold and installed by Tesla etc. Most of these are enabled with demand management, and most of them can be programmed to have a maximum charge rate, etc. But they don't consider the owners corporation's usage. Owners corporations aren't technically savvy enough to recognise the issue and impose conditions on the charger installations.

Chargers get installed and they have no demand control. That may be fine when you've got one or two EV chargers. But to put it in context, a 7.2 kilowatt charger, which is the average accelerated charger for single phase, is 7.2 kilowatts at peak charge. That's the equivalent of two and a half units' demand. For every car, it's two and a half lot's power consumption. The case study on pages 17 and 18 of the presentation shows how demand varies by, say, climatic conditions or time of day, but there's no diversity factor in a charger. If it's on, it's charging. It's going hard.

Unless you have centralised control, you will be subject to demand. The 2.4 kilowatts options pose an issue as well. It's just the scale. More cars will be able to charge before you get a problem, but you will eventually get that problem.

For strata properties, if you're thinking about EV charging, you need to be able to control and manage that charging system. This way, no harm and no cost impost is placed on the building as a result of the aggregate charge.

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