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Key highlights
- Four things set the price, and only one of them is the charger.
- Single phase supply caps you at about 7kW, which suits most drivers anyway.
- An older switchboard often needs a spare way and a safety switch before a charger can go on.
- The cable run is measured on site, because it has to be sized for distance as well as load.
- In a unit or townhouse the body corporate decision usually takes longer than the wiring.
- Anyone quoting without seeing your meter box is guessing.
The Four Things Any Quote Is Built From
People ask what a charger costs and expect one number. The honest answer is that the unit on the wall is the smallest variable in the job. What changes between one house and the next is everything behind it.
Every quote comes down to the same four questions. What supply does the property already have. What does the switchboard need before a new circuit can go on it. How far does the cable have to travel from the board to where the car parks. And which charger are you putting on the end of it.
You can answer three of those yourself before you ring anybody, which is the point of this guide.
- 1
Your supply. Single phase or three phase. This sets the ceiling on charging speed and it is decided at the street, not in your garage.
- 2
Your switchboard. Whether there is room for a new circuit and its safety switch, and whether the board is in good enough condition to take one.
- 3
The cable run. The real route from the board to the car, including the way it has to climb a wall or follow a boundary.
- 4
The charger. Which unit, and whether it needs to talk to solar, a battery or other chargers.
Your Supply Sets the Ceiling
Most Gold Coast houses are single phase, which means one live conductor coming in from the street. On single phase a home charger tops out around 7kW.
Three phase means three live conductors, and it opens up 11kW and 22kW charging. It is far more common in the newer northern estates, where it was laid while the streets were being built, and much rarer in the older suburbs near the beach.
You can check which you have in under a minute. Open the meter box and look at the main switch. Single phase has one, three phase has three of everything sitting side by side.
The Switchboard Is Where Quotes Diverge
A charger is not plugged in. It gets its own circuit, its own breaker and its own residual current device, which is the safety switch that cuts power the moment current leaks to earth.
That means the board has to have physical room for two new devices, and it has to be sound enough to take them. Boards built before the nineties often have neither. Boards from the estate era have the room but frequently no safety switch on the circuits that matter.
This is the line on a quote that surprises people, and it is also the one that is entirely avoidable as a surprise. A board gets looked at before the price is written, not on install day.
The Cable Run Is Measured, Not Estimated
The cable has to be sized for the distance it travels as well as the current it carries. A long run needs a thicker conductor, and thicker cable costs more per metre and takes longer to install.
What catches people out is that the run is rarely the distance they picture. On the older beachside blocks the meter box sits at the front boundary and the car parks at the rear, so the cable goes the length of the property. On the split level homes climbing the hill the garage is under the house and the board is up at street level, so the run drops a full storey.
In a newer estate home the board is usually on the garage wall with the car on the other side of it, and the run barely registers.
Which Charger You Pick, and What Actually Changes
Wall chargers sold in Australia mostly use the Type 2 connector, which is the socket new EVs sold here take. That means the charger will outlast the car you own now.
Above that, the differences that cost money are the ones that do something: talking to your solar so the car charges on what the panels are making, sharing a supply between two chargers, or metering so a workplace can bill it back.
A charger that has none of those and one that has all of them are both perfectly good installations. The question is which of them you will actually use.
Units, Townhouses and Where the Time Goes
In a unit block the electrical work is usually the straightforward part. Basement parking, a large common supply, and often an existing rise that can be tapped.
The part that takes time is agreeing with the body corporate where the charger draws its power from and how it is metered back to your lot. That is a decision by a committee and it runs to their meeting schedule, not to ours.
Start it before you buy a unit. Giving the committee the technical detail in writing, so they are deciding on something specific, moves it along faster than asking for permission in general terms.
How to Get a Number You Can Rely On
Anyone quoting an installation without looking at your meter box is guessing, and a guess on this job is how a price changes on the day.
The fastest way to a real answer is a photo. Open the meter box, take a clear shot of the board with the door open, and take a second one standing at the board looking towards where the car parks. Those two pictures answer three of the four questions above.
- Photo one. The switchboard with the door open, close enough to read the breakers.
- Photo two. Standing at the meter box, looking towards where the car parks.
- One line of detail. What you drive, or what you are about to buy, and whether you have solar.
Questions People Ask
Because three of the four things that set the price are at your property and cannot be seen from a phone call.
A number given without looking at the board is a number that changes on install day, which helps nobody. Send two photos and you will get a real answer quickly.
Not always, and it is less often than people fear. What a charger needs is a spare way in the board and its own safety switch.
On many boards that means adding to what is there. On older boards with no room and no residual current protection it means replacing the board, which gets priced in before the job starts.
It is cheaper, and it is slower and it is not intended as a daily arrangement. The portable cable that ships with a car draws from a normal power point at around 2kW.
A dedicated charger runs at about three times that on single phase, on its own circuit with its own protection, which is what makes it safe to run every night.
Most people do not. Single phase at 7kW puts back far more overnight than an average day uses.
Three phase earns its keep if you drive long distances daily, charge two cars from one supply, or want a short top up in the afternoon.
It moves fuel spending from a petrol station to your electricity bill, so the bill goes up and the fuel spend goes down.
How far it moves depends on when you charge and whether you have solar. Charging on your own daytime solar is the cheapest electricity you will ever put in a car.
