How many EVs can your building already charge?
Most strata buildings have more spare power than they think. Adjust the figures below to see how many electric vehicles your existing supply could support, with no switchboard upgrade and no rewiring.
Your building & cars
Tap ? for helpThe total load your supply can deliver on average, across all three phases.
All figures are based on averages.
A plain-English guide
Total power on average
Your spare amps turned into kilowatts: the most your building can push out at any one moment. We assume standard 240 V supply across 3 phases.
amps × 240 V × 3 phases ÷ 1000Supply delivers (per day)
Total power, multiplied by the hours cars are parked and able to charge. This is the total energy your building can hand out across a day.
total power × hours parkedCar's consumption
The energy one EV uses to replace a normal day's driving: its consumption applied to the distance covered. You can adjust the consumption to whatever suits your own vehicle; most EVs use around 15–22 kWh per 100 km depending on size, efficiency, and driving speed and style.
km per day ÷ 100 × efficiencyEVs your supply could support
The headline figure: total energy your building delivers each day, divided by what one car needs. It shows how far your existing supply really stretches.
supply delivers ÷ each car needsThis is an indicative estimate
All figures are based on averages and a simplified model: 240 V supply, 3-phase power, and load shared evenly across the day. Your building's real capacity depends on its switchboard, existing electrical loads, metering and safety compliance. Before making any decisions, please get a proper assessment of your building from our team.
Why level 1 charging is best fit for purpose in Stratas
Why most strata buildings can already charge EVs
It is a common assumption that charging EVs in an apartment block means a costly electrical upgrade. In practice, most buildings rarely use their full electrical supply at once. Lifts, lighting, common-area power and individual apartments almost never peak at the same moment, which leaves a meaningful amount of spare capacity in the main switchboard for much of the day.
EV charging is also very forgiving. The average Australian drives about 31 kilometres a day, which an EV can replace with only a few kilowatt-hours of energy. Because most cars sit parked at home for around 19 hours a day, there is a long window in which to top them up slowly. Spreading that demand across the night, using the spare capacity you already have, is usually enough to keep a building's EVs charged without adding a single amp of new supply.
What is Dynamic Load Management?
Dynamic Load Management is the technology that turns spare capacity into shared EV charging. Instead of giving every charger a fixed, full-power connection, a DLM system monitors the building's live electrical load and continuously adjusts how much power each car receives.
When the building is quiet, cars charge faster. When other loads rise, the system eases back so the total never exceeds what the supply can safely deliver. The result is that many more vehicles can share the same connection than a fixed allocation would ever allow, and the building stays within its limits at all times.
Read more on our Metering and Dynamic Load Management page, or see the full picture on How It Works.
Do you need a switchboard upgrade to charge EVs?
In many strata buildings, no. Because Dynamic Load Management works within your existing spare capacity, a large number of EVs can be supported without upgrading the switchboard or running new supply from the network. Upgrades tend to become relevant only when demand grows well beyond what the current supply can share, or when the existing infrastructure is already at its limit.
The calculator on this page gives an indicative estimate of how far your supply could stretch. For a definitive answer, the spare capacity, switchboard condition and metering arrangements in your building need to be assessed properly. Contact us for an assessment and we will confirm what your building can support.
Level 1 vs Level 2 charging in apartments
Level 1 charging uses a standard power outlet and delivers a slow, steady top-up. Level 2 charging uses a dedicated wall unit and charges several times faster. Faster sounds better, but in a strata setting the slower option is often the smarter one.
Because residents' cars are parked for so long each day, there is rarely any need to charge quickly. Slower charging draws far less power per car, which means the same building supply can serve many more vehicles at once. It also avoids the demand spikes that force expensive upgrades. For most apartment residents, slow overnight charging quietly replaces a day's driving with power to spare by morning.