EV buildings grant program in NSW back on track after four month delay

The long awaited second stage of New South Wales’ (NSW) $10 million EV Buildings Readiness Grant Program will start in two weeks, after being delayed by four months.

The program opened in October last year and closed early, in mid-December, after a swathe of applications were lodged by apartment-dwelling New South Welshmen desperate to install electric vehicle (EV) chargers in their buildings.

The state proposal is to retrofit about 100 apartment buildings throughout NSW using a co-funding model that will provide up to 80 per cent, or a maximum of $80,000, of cash to fund the necessary upgrades and purchase and installation of up to four chargers.

The state promised to pay for up to four shared chargers per building, with a capacity of 7 kilowatt (kW) for single phase connections and 22 kW for three phase connections.

The two step- grants process saw applicants apply for the grant and then locked in commercial quotes, design, and building owner approvals during Stage 2.

Stage 2 is anticipated to open on 15 August, when all of the feasibility reports are expected to be done, says a statement from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.

“To ensure fairness for all applicants, the commencement date of Stage 2 was revised due to delays in completing some Stage 1 reports caused by external factors,” a spokesperson from the department told TheDriven.

The grants process required feasibility studies on the projects chosen in Stage 1 to be done by outside consultants. Delays in finishing these meant the original April start date for the second leg of the grants process was pushed out first to July, and now to August.

In NSW, 15 per cent of the population live in apartments and there are nearly 84,000 strata schemes in the state, which has raised the issue of fairness given most EV owners will charge their car at home.

With older apartment buildings common in Sydney and up and down the coast, EV drivers have been waging a battle for years against strata committees reluctant to commit to the cost of installing chargers.

The grant program is the NSW government’s latest salvo to fix the problem, a shift towards supporting EV owners that includes 2021 legislation allowing strata committees wanting to install EV charging or rooftop solar infrastructure to do so with consent from just half of the building owners.

But gaining consent is just part of the problem as retrofitting older buildings is complicated because it may require upgrading electrical infrastructure to handle higher power use, committees need to think about how many charging points might be needed in future as well as today, and who will pay for all of this.

The NSW government wants to use the 100 buildings that get the grants as a template, showing the way forward for others.