EV charging in a Perth apartment: the strata playbook that actually works

About one in six Perth homes is an apartment or townhouse, and a growing share of EV buyers live in one. The pattern we see: an owner wants a charger in their bay, the strata council says no because nobody has done it before, and the whole thing stalls for a year. It does not need to go that way.

Why strata says no (and what they are actually worried about)

• Power capacity. Will the building supply cope if five owners plug in at 6pm?
• Cost recovery. Who pays for the electricity, and how is it metered?
• Precedent. If they approve yours, what happens when ten more owners ask?
• Liability. Who owns the cabling through common property?

The proposal that gets approved

The successful motions all share the same shape. The owner pays for everything: the charger, a dedicated sub meter on their bay, and the cabling from the main switchboard. The charger has load management so it can never overload the building supply. And the agreement includes a clause that the infrastructure can be reused by future owners, which turns your private spend into a building upgrade.

That last point is the magic sentence. Framing the install as the first bay of a building-wide EV plan, rather than a personal favour, is what flips councils from defensive to supportive.

What it costs in practice

A single bay retrofit in a typical Perth underground carpark runs $2,500 to $4,500 depending on the distance from the main board and whether trenching or fire rated penetrations are needed. Buildings that pre-install a shared backbone (a bigger feed and a distribution board near the carpark) bring later bays down to $1,500 to $2,000 each.

We prepare the technical pack for strata submissions as part of the quote: load calculations, metering plan and a one page summary the council can table. Most approvals land within one or two meetings when the paperwork answers the four worries up front.