Apartment Chargers SEAI grant Talk August 5th

This is progress. But a grant is one thing and legislation another.

The government has to cut red tape so that property management can install chargers easily, even bring in some incentives. Secondly, the government must bring on more "red tape" and legislate for right of tenants/owners to install charger in the apartment so that the property management can't stop it and/or obstruct which is what happens now.

Would the easiest solution be for chargers connected to a prepay meter hybrid.

just like a public charger but for a regular fee as opposed to a premium.

The utility could be mandated to charge residential rates + nominal fee to recoup costs

So a person with a driveway gets a free charger while someone who doesn't have a driveway has to pay to get a charger and then pay a premium to use it, there's zero reason for a person without a driveway to buy an BEV.

I thought they wanted to encourage people to buy EVs not discourage.

If it costs more than their current domestic rate it's a premium and an OMC won't be able to offer a charging solution at domestic rates.

For my development the whole place would have to be dug up and trunking ran everywhere for chargers. Then we'd have to pay for the cables and chargers. This will cost a lot and never get past an AGM or EGM. Every MUD will be the same.

So how do you encourage a sizeable percentage of our population to take up BEV's is they are not getting any of the benefit of owning an BEV?

It'll cost a lot more than €700 to install a charger in a MUD. If done in batches the cost will go down per unit but it'll be bigger upfront cost to the OMC which won't get past an AGM/EGM

The place will need to be dug up to bury the cables. Car parking is spread around my development and you'll need to cross several internal roads to run the cables and then the parking spaces will need to be dug up to install the chargers.

What utility is going install chargers in MUDs? Revenue from the charger is back to paying a premium to charge at home and therefore zero reason to change to an BEV

As ted1 says it is about 80% of wiring costs up to the charger then each owner would qualify for the old grant of home charger. However, this is just one possible scenario discussed. The other one which is somewhat preffered by SEAI is the comunal solution.

I think the first one is the most reliable. And I don't get the issue which people say about upgrading blocks connection. If there are 20 units each with 12kVA and the installation of 20 chargers connected to every individual units meter is such 12kVA is never tripped what is the problem?

The communal would involve a third party company (Charge Point Operator) which adds another layer of complexity, read costs. They actually have to plug into the comunal connection which, in time may need upgraded and it is more expensive from the get go. How manny communal chargers are needed for 20-40 cars from the same block with 20 apartments? The charger which doesn't belong to anybody tends to break more often.

The OMC applies for the MUD grant through the agent. They own the wiring up to the charger. They can also include the chargers in the 80% cost if they want to and in this case the owners don't qualify for the 600 grant. The owner cannot pay individually for the 20%. However the OMC can decide the level of wiring. They can decide to wire the carpark up to 1 charger per each apartment or only to a limited number of chargers to keep the costs down. This can create another mechanism to force complicance with property management fees. Who doesn't pay gets disconnected. I know in our case is who doesn't pay does not get access to the car park.

It is messy and really depends on the physical layout. Some would have the meters in the carpark some would not be connected and some would have on street parking. Some would be non-allocated which seems to curl even more the problem. Of course there are solutions there, like short term leasing but it requires willingness to solve it. For these reasons there is no cap on the grant and SEAI wants as many applications as possible. I magine in time this will be capped.

From my limited experience the agents don't really care, to put it mildly, the OMC board usually listens the agent as the EV driver has vested interests. An AGM is once every year and such issues are played down. People gets discouraged and the status-quo prevails.

I got a grant for my apartment install 3 years ago

dragging up an old thread as just saw this article

"Ocean Towers Apartments were one of the first apartment complexes in Ireland to successfully avail of this SEAI Apartment EV grant scheme"

Is there any visibility on the actual take up of this scheme anywhere?

I've seen a quote for a similar installation from them and it wasn't pretty. You're quite far in your estimate. Missing some digits in your multiplier

The cost of the charger points was the least bit in the whole quote. With installation running on existing cable trays with existing holes for routing the cables and distances measured in meters the total cost was in 6 digits ex-VAT. The solution they provide is unsuitable for a residential complex. They sell 2x(2x22W) and tell those who don't know that it provides the best value as the cars will charge faster and will have a great turnaround. In reality who plugs the car at 8pm will not be bothered to move the car at 3am to make space for the neighbour. More suitable would be a higher number of single phase chargers with load balancing. Also I doubt the landlord supply of medium sized complexes have 90kVA spare. That is a cost which they don't mention. The solution provided is not scalable and in 5 years time will be insufficient. The SEAI grant fundamentally missed the point of scale by forcing all aplicants to use the landlord supply and not allow individual connections where possible.