In a win for owners (and potentially renters) of strata apartments, the NSW parliament last week finally passed a further set of amendments to their Strata Schemes Management Act.
First put to the NSW parliament in 2025, the parts of the new amendments relating to EV charging effectively add up to a ‘right to charge’, in that where an owner applies to install an EV charging station on the owner’s lot, Strata Committees cannot “unreasonably object to the installation of the electric vehicle charging station.”
This includes where the installation also requires changes to, or work to be carried out on, the common property of the strata scheme.
It does not, however, offer carte blanche to any EV charging solution that the owner may want to install (despite some scare-mongering on behalf of some bodies and businesses who have promulgated ideas such as the deemed approval will ‘threaten building supply capacity’ and/or pose a major fire risk).
The answers to both scare campaigns are in fact spelt out in the NSW Government website devoted to the changes.
In relation to overloading the building supply after the first few chargers are installed, the owners corporation is the body that selects which EV charging option suits a particular building, not the owner applying for a charger installation.
Consequently, any approval for individual EV chargers must take into account the ultimate load of a building wide charging roll-out, and consequently select (at the outset) a scalable demand-management solution. (Effectively making the apartment complex ‘EV Ready’).
In most situations, that rules out the installation of unmanaged chargers (including simple power points) that go back to an individual owner’s switchboard.
Regarding the EV fire-safety issue that gets trotted out from time to time – the stats simply do not bear out the myth. The owners corporation is also entitled to develop and execute an EV charging strategy – which is where any fire issues can be addressed.
(It is worth noting here that electric cars are not regarded as posing an increased fire risk – although electric bicycles and scooters do. Conflating the two to tar EV charging with the same brush – as is done by some – is, to say the least, disingenuous).
So how does the new legislation apply in the case of an owner wanting to install their own EV charger?
To start with, if the building is currently EV-ready, there will already be a process provided by the strata committee to connect individual EV chargers to the building EV charging infrastructure.
The new legislation simply makes it clearer regarding the rights and obligations of owners and owners corporations in relation to EV charger installations – including, in most cases that it is the responsibility of the owner or tenant to pay for the charger.
In the case of the building not being ‘EV ready’, the NSW EV strata legislation website helpfully lays out a 5-step process to reach that stage, as well as spelling out the stakeholder responsibilities of owners and Owners Corporations.
Interestingly, the new legislation includes provisions to invalidate any strata committee by-law that unreasonably prohibits the installation of an electric vehicle charging station on an owner’s lot, as well as setting out maximum time periods for replying to a request.
Together, these address the occasionally seen issue of obstructionist strata committees taking a ‘NO EVs’ approach in order to avoid spending on EV charger planning and/or upgrading outdated electrical switchboards to current-day safety standards.
Also included on the NSW government webpage are a number of useful documents, including a quick-reference guide, templates for resident surveys and charging requests, energy assessment request forms and sample meeting motions.
Trustworthy, mythbusting links are also provided there, including for EV fire safety information as well as the Australian Building Code Board’s advisory note on EV charging.
Whilst the other states and territories may not as far down the track in supporting the passage of EV charger installation in strata development –with the passing of the NSW legislation, it can only be hoped it hurries them up by providing a potential model for analogous legislation.
(Also, as noted earlier by TheDriven, Victoria has recently released a very helpful, detailed guide to EV charger installations for strata developments
