What to Consider When Installing EV Charging at an Apartment Building

Being able to charge your electric vehicle (EV) at home is a priority for most when choosing to switch to electric. And this can be quick and easy to arrange if you have your own private driveway – there are a whole host of companies to choose from who can meet your requirements.

But for the residents of apartment buildings, it’s not always straightforward. If you’re a residential landlord or you’re a member of a residents committee and you’ve ever looked into installing EV infrastructure at your apartment building, it’s possible you’ve felt overwhelmed by the number of factors you need to consider… and decided that it’s not a problem you want to tackle now!

But although installing EV infrastructure in a communal car park can throw up a number of challenges, these can be quickly overcome with the right solution.

Here’s what you need to consider and what you can do:

1.Putting safety first

Making sure your EV installation is safe, both for EV drivers and non-EV drivers, is a key consideration when investing in EV infrastructure. The charging zone should be well lit and the area free from any trip hazards. There should also be good, clear access to the charge points, and any blockages caused by charging cars should be avoided.

Your EV charging provider should be able to advise on the safest approach for your site and include these in your scheme design.

2. Future-proofing your site

When considering how many charge points you need at your site, don’t just look at what the demand is now. It’s important to look ahead and anticipate what the need will be in the future, when we’re at full EV adoption. It may be that you only need two charge points now, but as EV adoption increases demand could grow quite quickly and you’ll need to add more to maintain a consistent experience.

The best forward-thinking solution is to lay the full infrastructure at the start, which may mean the cabling running through every parking bay. This gives you the option to very quickly add more charge points and electrify more bays as and when needed, without further disruption. So, you may start off with just two charge points in your car park, increasing swiftly as EV ownership increases amongst residents.

3. Knowing your capacity

From the outset, it’s important to understand the electrical capacity at your site to avoid any power cuts. This is measured by calculating the difference between the load coming into the apartment building and the peak electrical demand. The peak is normally reached in the evening, when residents are back from work and their home appliances, such as washing machines, ovens, kettles and tumble dryers, are in use.

If your capacity is enough to support a charge point network, you can use your current supply. If not, then you may need to create an additional supply to your site. This is quick to evaluate, and something your EV charging provider should be able to advise on this when undertaking your initial site survey.

4. Connecting to the power supply

Apartments require a very different approach to houses when it comes to installing EV infrastructure, as the communal areas share a metered connection. If individual charge points were connected to each apartment separately and run as home chargers, this could overload the main fuse and potentially damage the electrical infrastructure of the building.

Instead, you need a network of charge points that are designed to run in a group and allow for system-wide load balancing. This means that the electricity demand at your site is constantly monitored, and the power used by your charge points increases or decreases in response.

This protects the building and eliminates the risk of any associated power outages.

5. Managing your charge points

Once the charge points are installed at your site, it’s important to make sure they’re reliable and well maintained, and that you can arrange a call out if anything goes wrong. Current government regulations require public charge points to be available 99% of the time, which is something you should consider for your charge points.

The payment process will also need to be managed to ensure your electricity costs are covered by residents, and there should be an ongoing customer support function.

You may decide this is something you or your management company can oversee, or this is also something that can be outsourced to make it a very hands-off approach.

Having one provider who oversees the entire installation and ongoing management of the charge points can be the best way to ensure a seamless process. Sometimes the more the process is segmented, the more failure points there are - increasing the potential for problems.

6. Funding your EV installation

Investing in large-scale EV infrastructure may seem costly and time-consuming, but there are options available that simplify the process and make it much more straightforward. And if a funded solution is suitable for your site, we can help.

With our fully funded, maintained and managed EV charging solution for apartment buildings we take care of everything on your behalf – from the initial scheme design, right through to the commissioning of the charge points. We then monitor and maintain the charge points on an ongoing basis, addressing any faults as and when they arise.

And our infrastructure is future-proof, allowing you to add more charge points as and when you need them in the future.

To find out if your site is suitable for a funded approach, get in touch here.