EV Charger Installation in Altona North

The established Altona North housing stock around The Circle and the older residential grid was wired for a very different household. Fifty year old boards with rewireable fuses or early breakers, no RCD protection on final subcircuits, and a main switch that has no headroom left once you add a 32A continuous load.

We are not going to hang a charger off that. The board comes first, at $800 to $3,500 depending on what the meter panel and consumer mains need, and then the charger circuit is straightforward. The upside is that these homes have proper driveways with a garage or carport down the side, so once the board is right the cable run is short and cheap.

The newer estates have excellent switchboards. Spare ways, RCDs already on everything, a main switch with capacity. The electrical part is the easy part. The complication is physical. Many of these dwellings have their meter panel in a bank on a shared boundary wall or in a common services cupboard, and the garage is a tandem or single under the first floor.

That means the charger circuit has to run from a board that is not on your own wall, through or around a structure you share with two neighbours. Sometimes the route is obvious. Sometimes it needs owners corporation consent because the cable crosses common property. We work that out at the site visit rather than discovering it on install day.

Altona North is one of the few residential areas in the west where we regularly find three phase already at the property. The light industrial fringe toward Kororoit Creek Road means the distribution network carries it, and older properties that once ran workshop equipment, a commercial fridge or a large ducted system sometimes still have all three phases at the meter.

If that is you, a 22kW capable charger at $2,500 to $3,000 plus becomes a real option rather than a theoretical one. Be aware that plenty of cars cap their onboard AC charger at 7kW or 11kW regardless of what the wall unit can deliver, so check the vehicle before paying for the larger install.

EV charging equipment is prescribed electrical work. Under AS/NZS 3000 it takes a dedicated final subcircuit, cable sized for continuous rather than intermittent load, a correctly rated breaker and RCD protection suitable for DC leakage. A licensed Registered Electrical Contractor has to do it and issue a Certificate of Electrical Safety.

Altona North sits on the Jemena network. Where the supply cannot comfortably carry a full 32A charger plus the house, we fit a load management device so the charger backs itself off when the oven and the ducted are running, rather than tripping the main switch at seven in the evening.

The other thing worth doing once, properly, is the cable size. If a second EV is even a possibility, running heavier cable now costs a little more in copper and nothing in labour. Pulling a second circuit through a townhouse wall cavity in three years time costs considerably more than both together would have today.