Apartment Chargers SEAI grant

I suspect it's all talk no action.

You really need a management company with bags of cash (most don't have spare money) and apartment owners that are heavily pro EV, think D4 or green party, otherwise I can see it fly.

There is companies that specialist in this area such as ePower.ie or easygo.

If you are an individual apartment owner I suggest you quietly get a full proposal together and once it's fully budgeted and written up then bring it to annual meeting to be voted on. Typically if asked management companies just say no or spend years "working on it"

Some people with designated spaces have run cables from their home fuse board all the way to the parking space (with permission). This gets over the costs (you pay yourself) and billing etc. Even an ordinary household socket at parking space with give you 2kWh per hour rate enough for around 100km a day.

The grid is up to it, particularly if it's load managed and charging is overnight. St night the existing site supply will have lots of excess. Most cars only need 3 to 7kW at night, and that's easy to provide. Even if supply upgrades were required these could be delayed until demand was there as in say 20% of cars were EVs. The existing supply to say a house is 60amp while chargers are typically 32 amp max and putting in an instant shower is about 40 amp and no one blinks an eye at a triton shower going in. Even if everyone went EV overnight it would be relatively easy for the grid to manage. Indeed it may help the grid as cars will probably avoid peak times and drive overnight demand when there is typically excess renewables such as wind. The grid manages for example in the ad break for the late late you show or Ireland soccer match when everyone puts on their kettles at once (10 amps). Supplies to apartments are already very big, with lots of excess at night.

Similar experience in my development. Management company unwilling, information about the grant and initial quotes I've got and passed to OMC director was discussed but no progress/decision in 6 months. They understand that it would be good to take advantage of the grant, but my impression is that until 20-30% of people have EVs, there's very little motivation to go through the hassle (and justify expenses). Another excuse I've got from OMC was a 'liability' to look after chargers long term. Hopefully by not giving up, we'll get somewhere after AGM.

think about it every apartment will have a 4 ring hob that can draw 2 kw and a oven that will draw 5 kw

so thats 7kw load in apartment between 5 and 7

so at night time that’s capacity is free. For every apartment to use. I,e no difference in supply required.

with load balancing the chargers could work during peak hours without any issues.

in summary management agents are not qualified to make comments about the grid and are full of nonsense

I come back to this to report that finally after over 5 years, 9 months and over 175,000 km driven on electric, we've got chargers installed in our apartment complex.

It took about 3.5 years to start moving from the OMC point of view then 1.5 years to select the CPO, apply for the grant and then about 8 months to get the installation started. The installation works took about a week, then another week to get the the spots painted. After that waited a month to get the charge points connected to the grid. From here on another very long two months to get them up on the app. So here we are, we have 6 points currently and pre wired for another 6. They are 3 phase max 32A (max 22kW) each but with load balancing. I don't remember exactly what is the max power of the installation. The price per kWh is set by the OMC which depends on how much we pay for the landlord supply. It does not have night time component but currently it is about 40% cheaper than ESB ecars. I must say this wouldn't have been possible without some forward thinking people in the OMC board and without the SEAI grant.

Great to see progress but it's certainly taking long enough

I wonder would it be simpler for the management companies to simply install conduits in the car park allowing owners to install their own chargers and cable back to their meter

You'd obviously want a charger that requires a password or RFID to work but it would let owners access those sweet night-time EV rates

it’ll be a long run back to the meter and could be quite disruptive in pulling the cable through.

Yeah true enough, you'd also end up with a mashup of chargers which wouldn't be ideal

Ideally you'd have the car park setup with conduit and ducting, then owners could "buy" a charger from the management company

The management company would then install it and cable it up for that space

Something similar could be done for on street parking, have underground ducting setup to the meter boxes or mini pillar. The ducting could terminate at bollards on the kerbside. Owners would then request the council to install a charger for a fee

Obviously this only works for designated spaces, a free for all situation probably works better with a CPO

We don't have designated spots. That was one of the most contentios points and which delayed the decision so much. Also we have a fractionar number per apartment not 1 not 2 but 1.8 which ties in with not going for designated parking spots route. We're 50ish apartments development so our setup is about half @Buddy Bubs also spread over two underground and one overground. What's different is that they've painted the spots and legally you can't park there if you're not charging. Trying to clarify now with property management how they see the issue

I've 2 EVs and between us we do about 500kms a week, I would do 350kms or so of that. So it would be a charge every 2 weeks for each of we did same mileage in them both. But I have free work charging so I never have to use the development chargers but handy if I ever have a long journey I suppose..