Future Ready - Electric Vehicles

Over the past 20 years of my strata career, there have been a few challenges with changes impacting strata and community titled properties, from pay television satellite dish installations and cable backboning to gas hot water heaters moving externally, solar panels, NBN, digital TV aerials and flammable cladding but potentially the biggest impact on strata buildings during my time is here now in Electric vehicles.

To date we have received occasional requests from owners for corporations to install suitable infrastructure for the charging of electric vehicles but we understand that as the change from internal combustion to electric power gains momentum, so will the changes to infrastructure within the buildings housing these vehicles.

The greatest challenge I see is that every property is different and the requirements from one building to the next vary greatly.

While a townhouse development with separate garages may not notice a change in the vehicles used by residents, the story is likely to be different for apartment buildings and older strata complexes where the existing carport structures are not ready for infrastructure changes.

This week, three of our managers at Strata Management SA attended A Strata Community Association education session on future ready buildings and were intrigued by the information put forward by Dan Porter of Savant Energy, Justin Bralic of Solarlab and Andrew Carr of NHP.

The key questions recommended to be put to buildings starting their EV charging journey are designed to ensure that sensible, relevant strategic decisions are made by corporations:

How many residents are actively engaged in purchasing an EV today?
How many are likely to purchase in 6 – 12 months?
In 12 months – 2 years?
Never?

On the infrastructure side it was useful to be looking into ensuring today’s technology is scalable for our client corporations in order to address changing demand and our managers enjoyed learning about the equipment including load management systems and billing solutions which will be critical for our clients in addressing changes to common power usage.

With 8.4% of all new cars sold today being EVs, an increase of 121% from 2022, it is clear that having access to professionals in this space with the ability to help our clients move forward will prove to be valuable.

At Strata Management SA, our professional team look forward to working with our client corporations to address their changing needs.