[Vid6639]

Originally Posted by reignofchaos

For EV charging, afaik BESCOM supplies a separate connection and meter that is at a concessional rate. I do not think the existing connection will be reused.

Yes but as I mentioned most apts won't have spare slots for more meters in the LT panels.

So the apt would need to spend on new LT panels as well for more meters.

[Early_Adopter]

I live in a high rise apartment complex in Hyderabad with about 1500 apartments in 3 levels of car parking.

I went through a lengthy process of installing a 7.5kW single phase AC charger for my EV at my parking slot. This involved multiple stakeholders - the Management Committee of our society, the local Discom, the dealer (MG) and the contractor of MG who is authorised to install the charger. The cost of the charger and the installation (including the cabling) is included in the car price.

I finally got the charger installed negotiating my way through the process with all these stakeholders and of course with some luck too.

This involved laying a cable of 100 meters from the LT panel where my meter is located to my allocated parking slot.

As luck would have it, my sanctioned load is 10kW (3-Phase) and my RMD was about 2.4kW - so there was no need to upgrade the sanctioned load.

But, due to stringent processes set out by MG, the contractor refused to install the charger unless the wiring inside the LT panel upgraded from the current 6 sq mm to 10 sq mm. The society refused to undertake the wiring without the permission from the local Discom. I wrote letters, spoke to the Discom personnel and finally they approved the upgrade with a physical inspection.

Thanks to the local dealership team who obtained MG'a permission to lay a 100 meters of 16 sq mm cable through the cable ducts, shafts and galleys and some supportive folks in the management committee of our society - the work was finally done.

Having gone through this experience, I offered my volunteering service to our society for future installations and I also suggested a roadmap for future - wherein, first 20-30 EV owners will lay the cables to their individual slots (but sticking to the process), identifying common charging points to install AC slow chargers (a combination of 15A sockets, 3.2 to 7.5kW chargers) in phase -2, followed by installation of DC fast chargers in phase-3.

Overall, the process is lengthy especially in large apartment complexes and there's less awareness as to how to handle the exceptions. A bit of perseverance combined with supportive stakeholders will make this experience smooth for future installations.

[abtyagi]

For context in Residential apartments in Bangalore, I will provide my experience as the society president and current issues with setting up charging stations

- BBMP did not have any provision for approval for meter installation, until very recently. Even now it's as usual, complicated.
- BESCOM as of a few months ago did not have a provision for charger installation from the meter, you were supposed to take a new connection. Now they allow but getting approval and taking a live cable(which has to be done through BESCOM, greasy palm) from the meter to basement(even more tricky if you have multi-level) parking is prohibitively expensive. Also, it may be required to increase the load capacity depending upon your vehicle's charger.

[macbeth]

Wonder how will they manage in apartments where there is no covered parking. Will require a lot of digging for each parking slot in the open. The issue compounds for owners who park their cars on the road.

[KL01toKA03]

A related question. Is it financially viable for an apartment to have a solar powered (or from the grid) to provide common EV charging facilities.

1. Would it need someone to supervise/collect payments.
2. How long would it need to break even?
3. Would it be possible to list the availability of the charger on some app where others can know about such a facility?

[sumeethaldankar]

I wanted to know how can one charge a EV when it is parked on those puzzle type parkings where the cars are on the lift. One of my friend lives in a society with the lift type puzzle parking. So he was concerned in the future if he was to get an EV how will he charge in the parking lift. The lift goes underground with the car and are retrieved on demand.

[troublemaker]

It is going to a huge problem adding EV charging facilities in current apartment buildings.
- Majority of the buildings don't even have enough parking for the residents.
- Running cables from individual meters is nearly impossible for large complexes.
- Fire safety will be a major issue.
- Someone else charging in your connection is also possible.

I feel someone will have to come up with a common solution (like MyGate) where:
- There are fast charging ports
- An App can manage charging schedule, reminders and payments

[adrena]

This is my experience with the subject from here in Mumbai.

I have owned and driven the MG ZS ev since Mar 2020. Got the society to give us a go ahead for the charger in our parking. Took about a couple of weeks. To my surprise, the society called for an electrical system audit to make sure we have enough provisions to accommodate multiple such requests. We got the charger itself installed in a day from our existing meter.

In addition to this, we got an additional EV charging meter from Adani at a flat rate of INR 6.00 just for this. I think it is a fantastic offering from Adani. Again tooks about a month as we were in the first lockdown. Everything done and have not bothered about anything since then.

I had this amazing surprise during my visit to IKEA. Got an EV parking slot with free charging. It was slow charging but was near the entry and made us feel really special.

From my perspective, I'm not even sure if this is a roadblock to adoption.

[for_cars1]

Originally Posted by troublemaker

It is going to a huge problem adding EV charging facilities in current apartment buildings.

Installing charging facility for every EV car owner/parking slot may not even be a feasible or scalable solution.
Just imagine the huge power requirement if a significant numbers of EV are being charged at the same time in an apartment complex on high capacity chargers.

In countries such as China where the EV adoption is significantly higher, there are dedicated charging stations in localities where the cars are driven into, parked and charged routinely. This looks like a tested and scalable solution.

[kartoosh]

One complete charge means at least 250kms of running capacity, not everyone munches such mileage on a daily basis so not every car will require a daily charge. Installing EV charging point at every parking lot could at best be a peace of mind thing with little practicality in big apartment complexes. In a complex with 500 flats and 100 EVs, 25 chargers should suffice IMO. A reserved slot managed through an app at least twice a week should do the job for everyone. Else, soon the discoms would do away with any discounting and start tweaking prices which would prove even more costlier than petrol (keeping limited battery life in mind). Its high time govt provides a legal cover to Internet and EV charging as basic necessity apart from Roti, Kapda and Makaan. Looks like a distant dream.

[sagarpadaki]

I feel a feasible solution is to have a common EV charging parking slots in each Apartment complex where one can drive in and plug in to charge the EV and pay whatever is the fixed amount by the association. Old apartments will have to see if they can somehow arrange for a 10-15 parking slots in the common area to be built and metered.

[vjbox]

My take on this is that setting up a EV charging station in Apartment complexes isn't a feasible affair especially with several thousand old buildings where even designated parking slots are not properly setup. I am yet to come across a progressive apartment society thinking of the future benefits of the residents. They are usually riddled with retired members with old school thought process (at least in the societies I have seen and live now). A simple overhead tank cleaning, repairing the drive way, ramps, sanitisation goes through several conflict of opinion, ego clashes and Oxford level English exchanges on WhatsApp that at times it would be down right ridiculous. Speaking of my apartment complex, I cannot fathom the idea and I can already imagine the sort of exchange that can occur on this topic.

One of the ways old/ existing apartments which care for the future living of the residents can execute this, is possibly to tie up with third party charging station providers (as and when they crop up in future) where they will be given dedicated space to setup the docking stations (assuming there is enough real estate within the premises to do so- An example is finding space in common parking lots, drive ways if they are wide enough etc). Say an apartment with 20 -25 houses can easily make do with 2-3 such stations as not all will be a EV user and can always take turns to charge- so imagine the same with much larger complexes with hundreds and thousands of flats. I. haven't really thought of the economics here as to how profitable this would be for the service provider but with enough sign ups, economy of scale can be achieved. Residents then pay per use just like how they do it when they travel. For modern/ upcoming constructions, dedicated EV charging dock in the respective parking lot is sure a great amenity to sell that I believe residents will gladly opt for.

At the end of the day people living in independent houses benefit the most as they will have the luxury of setting up easily.

[streetfighter]

My 2 cents... this becomes much more difficult for people staying in rented apartments (like me). One, we need to move around and change flats every few years. Secondly, most societies treat us as third-world citizens without any bragging rights (currently I'm not provided stilt parking just because I'm a tenant, but I pay Rs1000/month for parking whereas owners pay Rs400 for stilt covered parking). So an EV is not considered even distantly.

[Lobogris]

It depends on the building. Here in Delhi NCR, at my large highrise building, it was a breeze. I bought my MG ZS EV two months back. Simply walked in to the association office and by chance they were holding a meeting of the management committee. Most were known to me anyway. I said hello and asked about it. They had no issues. Now my flat is high up on the 10th floor and away from the parking slot. I have a 7KW sanctioned load. So there was no logic in bringing a wire so far down and across. I simply had the building electrician tap the closest available mainline wire cabinet from the building and install a 15A plug along with an MCB. Cost me around Rs 1000. Took about 30 minutes. That’s it. Slipped him Rs 500 for the work even though he insisted he was already on the payroll. The building obviously has plenty of power and tapping a main wire for a 2.5 or even 7KW load is no issue. We installed a cheap Rs 400 meter and the building will bill me internally as it goes into the common area electricity cost. In fact my parking slot was a little far from the nearest available electrical cabinet so they allotted me (unofficially) another slot near the cabinet. So I charge there every few days as needed. Since we have over 1000 parking slots for around 300 flats, parking is not an issue. No permission from the electricity department or any paperwork were required.

[Hayek]

Originally Posted by Axe77

For context, I live in a large apartment complex (~500 apartments) in Mumbai, spread across a reasonably large area with parking split across two underground car park levels.

I live in a very similar complex - with one basement and one ground level covered parking, with ~ 2000 parking slots. Our Managing Committee debated setting up fast chargers at certain points - but have instead settled on permitting 15 Amp connections to the very small (4-5) number of EV owners we have so far. To the best of my knowledge, the tap for these have been taken from the individual meters of the car owners. But I do agree that this is not sustainable as the number of slots rises. While our apartments have substantial connected load (my 3 BHK has an authorised load of 25 KVA), even a 7 KW charger if used at the same time as 5 ACs and water heaters could create a problem on available load. So while a 15 A / 3 KW charger works, larger capacities won’t. So we will need to find some kind of fast charging solution - probably by tieing up with someone like Tata Power who can set these up on a chargeable basis. Fortunately, we have the space and surplus parking slots to do that.