Owners corporation committees managing Australian strata buildings are under more pressure on EV charging than at any previous point. A committee that received one resident request for a charging solution two years ago may be fielding ten today. The NSW Government has active funding programmes to support building-wide EV charging installations. Queensland and Victoria have both updated their legislation to lower the approval threshold for EV charging in strata. Buildings that delayed are now moving forward, and the pace is accelerating.
The conversations in committee rooms and management offices tend to follow a predictable pattern. Power capacity. Load management. Switchboard upgrades. Electrical compliance. These are legitimate and important questions — but they are not the only questions. There is an entire layer of infrastructure that most strata committees never discuss because the electrician does not raise it, the charger installer does not raise it, and nobody in the room thinks of EV charging as a technology project. They should.
Smart EV chargers are network-connected managed devices. They communicate with cloud platforms in real time. They depend on internet connectivity, firewall configuration, VLAN segmentation, and managed switching infrastructure to function correctly. Without that foundation, the most expensive charging hardware in the world will show "offline" in the management portal, refuse to bill individual residents, and fail to load-manage the building's electrical supply at peak times.
This is the infrastructure conversation that needs to happen before any strata building approves an EV charging project.
Why Modern Smart EV Chargers Are Network Devices
There is a meaningful distinction between a dumb charger and a smart charger, and it matters enormously in a strata context.
A dumb charger does one thing: it provides electricity to a vehicle. It has no awareness of what other chargers in the building are doing, cannot identify which resident is charging, cannot report usage data, and cannot be remotely configured or updated. In a single-dwelling property where one person owns the charger and pays a single electricity bill, this is often sufficient.
In a strata building, a dumb charger creates immediate problems. Every resident charges their own vehicle, which requires individual billing. The building's electrical supply is shared, which requires active load management. The strata manager or owners corporation needs visibility over the system, which requires monitoring and reporting. None of that is possible without a smart charger — and a smart charger is, by definition, a network device.
How Smart Chargers Communicate: OCPP Explained
The industry standard communication protocol for smart EV chargers is OCPP — the Open Charge Point Protocol. Without going deep into the technical specification, OCPP is the language that a smart charger uses to talk to its cloud management platform. It operates over a standard WebSocket connection on port 80 or 443, which means it uses the same web traffic infrastructure as any other internet-connected device.
Through this constant connection to the cloud platform, a smart charger can:
Balance electrical load in real time. When twenty residents plug in at 6pm simultaneously, the load management system instructs each charger to draw only its allocated share of the available electrical supply. Without this, the combined demand would trip the building's switchboard. This is not an occasional feature — it is the core function that makes building-wide EV charging viable.
Enable individual resident billing. Each charging session is logged against a resident account. Residents pay for their own energy use through a billing application. The charger reports session start time, end time, and energy delivered to the cloud platform, which calculates the charge. This is only possible when the charger has a live connection to the platform.
Provide monitoring and reporting for the strata manager. The management portal shows charger status, active sessions, historical usage, and fault alerts. A strata manager reviewing a complaint from a resident about a faulty charger can check the portal remotely rather than dispatching someone to the car park.
Receive firmware updates and remote configuration. Charger software is updated over the air. Configuration changes — adjusting power limits, updating billing rates, adding a new resident — are pushed remotely. Without connectivity, none of this is possible, and any change requires a technician on site.
Maintain compliance records. Session logs provide an auditable record for the owners corporation. This matters for dispute resolution, for financial reconciliation, and for any compliance requirements that may apply under building management agreements.
The connection between the charger and the cloud platform must be live, stable, and correctly configured. This is a network infrastructure requirement, not an electrical one.
The Network Infrastructure Smart EV Chargers Require
Treating EV charging as a network project means specifying the right infrastructure before any hardware is ordered or any electrical work begins. The following components are required for a well-designed EV charging network in a strata building.
Dedicated VLAN for EV Charging
A VLAN (Virtual Local Area Network) is a logically separated network segment running on shared physical switching infrastructure. EV charging systems should operate on their own dedicated VLAN, isolated from resident internet access and from other building systems such as CCTV and access control.
This separation serves two purposes. First, it prevents residents from accessing the charger management interface over the network — an important security consideration. Second, it contains any network fault to the EV system only, so a problem with the EV VLAN does not affect resident internet or building security systems.
Configuring a dedicated EV VLAN is standard practice for any managed building network. It is the same approach used for CCTV, access control readers, and IP intercoms — devices that building managers already accept as network-dependent managed systems.
Wired Ethernet — Not Wi-Fi
Every smart EV charger in a strata car park should connect via wired ethernet. This is not a preference; it is a requirement for reliable operation.
Underground car parks present a notoriously hostile environment for Wi-Fi. Thick concrete floors and walls absorb and scatter wireless signal. Reinforcing steel causes additional interference. The result is an unreliable, intermittent connection that may appear functional during a walkthrough test but fails under operational conditions — particularly when the car park is full of vehicles, which provide additional signal absorption.
An EV charger that loses its Wi-Fi connection stops load-managing. It stops reporting sessions. It appears offline in the management portal. The strata manager gets calls from residents who cannot start a session, and the charger installer will tell you the Wi-Fi signal is fine because they tested it when the car park was empty.
Wired ethernet eliminates this failure mode. Each charger, or a small group of chargers sharing a local switch, connects via a physical ethernet cable to the building's managed network infrastructure.
Managed Switching in the Car Park
The ethernet cabling from chargers connects to a managed switch — either a dedicated switch installed in the car park or an extension of the building's existing managed switching infrastructure. The switch must support VLAN tagging so that EV charging traffic is correctly segmented from other network traffic on the same physical cable runs.
A managed switch also provides remote visibility. When a charger appears offline, the network team can check port status, traffic counters, and link health remotely without dispatching someone to the car park. This is the same remote diagnostic capability that Pickle uses across all managed building network infrastructure.
An unmanaged switch — the kind available from any consumer electronics retailer — does not support VLANs and provides no remote management capability. It is not appropriate for this application.
Internet Connectivity for the EV VLAN
The OCPP connection from each charger to its cloud management platform requires outbound internet access. The EV VLAN must be permitted to reach the internet through the building's firewall, specifically to the cloud endpoints used by the charging platform.
In most building networks, this is a firewall rule configuration task. The EV VLAN is assigned a source address range, and the firewall is configured to permit outbound connections from that range to the relevant destination addresses and ports. This is routine network administration work — but it must be done, and it must be done correctly.
Correct Firewall Rules
Incorrectly configured firewall rules are one of the most common causes of chargers appearing permanently offline after installation. The OCPP protocol uses WebSocket connections, typically over port 443 (HTTPS) or port 80. If the building's firewall applies overly restrictive outbound rules, or if the EV VLAN is not granted the correct outbound permissions, the charger will establish a physical network connection but fail to reach its management platform.
The failure mode is frustrating because the charger has power, has a network cable connected, and has an IP address — all of which look correct to anyone checking the physical installation. The fault is in the firewall policy, which requires network access to diagnose and correct.
Firewall rules for the EV charging platform should be documented at the time of installation and tested before the installation is signed off.
Bandwidth Requirements
EV charger telemetry traffic is very low bandwidth. Each charger sends small status messages to the cloud platform — a few kilobits per second under normal operation. A building with twenty chargers running simultaneously generates a total management traffic load well under 1 Mbps. Bandwidth is not a constraint for EV charging networks in any building with a standard business internet connection.
Reliability matters far more than raw bandwidth. A connection that delivers 50 Mbps but drops for thirty seconds every hour will cause more operational problems than a 10 Mbps connection that maintains consistent uptime. This is one reason why building internet infrastructure should be specified for reliability and redundancy, not just headline speed.
The Car Park Problem: Why Retrofitting Is Harder Than Planning Ahead
Underground car parks present specific infrastructure challenges that become significantly more expensive and disruptive when addressed after construction rather than during it.
Conduit and Cabling Runs Through Concrete
Running ethernet cable to individual parking bays requires conduit that penetrates concrete slabs and walls. In a building under construction, conduit is installed before the concrete is poured — a straightforward and inexpensive task. In an existing building, penetrating concrete structures requires core drilling, which is slower, more expensive, generates significant dust and noise, and may require engineering sign-off depending on the structural elements involved.
When an existing strata building undertakes a car park EV charging project, the electrical contractor will already be running conduit for the power cables to each charger. Data conduit — a separate conduit for ethernet cabling — should be planned and run at exactly the same time, using the same penetrations where possible. The incremental cost of running data conduit alongside power conduit is modest. The cost of returning to run data conduit separately after the electrical work is complete is substantially higher.
Many EV charging projects in existing buildings omit data conduit planning entirely because nobody in the project team raises it. The result is an installation that depends on Wi-Fi, which performs poorly in the environment for which it was chosen.
Extending the Building Network to the Car Park Level
Most strata buildings have their main distribution frame (MDF) on the ground floor or in a communications room — not in the basement car park. The building's managed network may not extend to the car park level at all, or may extend only as far as a single unmanaged switch installed for a previous project.
Connecting EV chargers to the managed network requires a physical cable run from the car park to the nearest managed switch or to the MDF, plus a managed switch in the car park to terminate individual charger connections. In a building where this infrastructure does not exist, it must be designed and installed as part of the EV charging project.
This is network infrastructure work. It is not part of the electrical contractor's scope, and it is not part of the charger installer's scope unless specifically agreed. It needs to be scoped, specified, and contracted separately — or the project will discover the gap after the electrical work is complete.
For buildings being designed and constructed now, the answer is to plan EV charging network infrastructure at the same time as all other building technology infrastructure. See our guidance on telecommunications planning for new strata developments for the broader context of getting this right from the beginning.
EV Charging as Part of the Building's Managed Network
The most useful way for a strata committee or building manager to think about EV charging infrastructure is to place it in the same category as CCTV cameras, access control readers, and IP intercoms. All of these are network-connected managed devices. All of them require:
- A dedicated VLAN for isolation and security
- Wired ethernet connections for reliability
- Managed switching infrastructure for remote diagnostics
- Firewall rules permitting outbound connections to cloud management platforms
- Ongoing network management to maintain uptime and resolve faults
Pickle already provides this managed network infrastructure for strata buildings across CCTV, access control, intercom, and building management systems. Adding EV charging to this managed environment means:
The EV VLAN is configured on the same managed switches that carry CCTV, access control, and other building system VLANs. There is no new physical infrastructure vendor — the existing managed switching infrastructure is extended to serve the EV charging system.
Firewall rules for the EV management platform are configured and documented alongside rules for other cloud platforms used by building systems. Rule changes and additions are handled through the same change management process.
Connectivity faults are monitored and diagnosed using the same remote monitoring tools used for all other building systems. When a charger goes offline, Pickle can check the network path remotely — switch port status, VLAN configuration, firewall policy — before anyone needs to visit the site.
The strata manager has a single point of contact for network-layer problems across all building systems. When a resident reports that their EV charging session failed, the building manager calls Pickle rather than spending forty-five minutes trying to determine whether the fault is with the charger hardware, the charger software, the building's internet connection, or the network configuration.
This is the practical benefit of treating EV charging as a building technology project rather than a pure electrical project. The network infrastructure that supports secure, well-designed apartment buildings is the same infrastructure that supports reliable EV charging systems.
What Happens Without a Managed Network
Strata buildings that install smart EV chargers without addressing network infrastructure encounter a predictable set of failures. These are not hypothetical — they are the common fault patterns that emerge when EV charging is treated as a purely electrical project.
Chargers appear permanently offline. The charger has power and a physical network connection, but the firewall blocks outbound OCPP traffic. The management portal shows every charger offline. Load management is not functioning. The charger installer says the installation is complete. The ISP says the internet connection is fine. The strata manager cannot get a clear answer about what is wrong.
Individual billing stops working. The charger cannot report session data to the cloud platform because the network connection is intermittent. Residents are using the chargers but the billing platform has no record of their sessions. The owners corporation cannot recover the cost of energy consumed.
Load management fails at peak times. During periods of network instability — which, on an unmanaged Wi-Fi network in an underground car park, may occur frequently — the load management system loses contact with individual chargers. Chargers revert to drawing their maximum rated power simultaneously. The combined load trips the building's main switchboard. Residents lose power.
The blame circuit. The charger installer blames the ISP. The ISP blames the charger installer. Both blame the building's network. The strata manager, who has no visibility into any of these systems, cannot independently verify any claim. Resolving the fault requires engaging a network specialist who was not part of the original project and has no documentation of the existing configuration.
All of these failures are avoidable with correct network planning before installation begins.
Planning Checklist for Strata Committees
Before an owners corporation approves an EV charging project, the committee should seek clear answers to the following questions. If the electrical contractor or charger installer cannot answer them, that is an indication that network infrastructure has not been considered.
Does the proposed charger system use OCPP, or a proprietary protocol? OCPP is the open industry standard. A proprietary protocol locks the building into a single vendor for the life of the installation and may limit future flexibility. OCPP-compliant chargers can be managed by any compatible platform.
Where will the charger controllers connect to the building network? There should be a specific answer: ethernet cable from the charger to a switch in the car park, connected back to the building's managed infrastructure. "Wi-Fi" is not an acceptable answer for a managed strata installation.
Is there ethernet cabling to the car park level, or will new cabling be needed? If new cabling is needed, it must be scoped and costed as part of the project — not discovered after the electrical work is complete.
Who will manage the network configuration for the EV VLAN and firewall rules? There should be a named responsible party. If the charger installer will configure the network and then hand it over to nobody, the building has no ongoing support for network-layer faults.
Does the building's internet connection have sufficient reliability for cloud-managed EV systems? A business-grade internet connection with a service level agreement is appropriate for a building with managed EV charging. A residential NBN connection shared between thirty apartments is not.
Is power and data conduit being run simultaneously? If the project involves new conduit runs to the car park, confirm that data conduit is included in the same scope. This is the single most cost-effective infrastructure decision available at the time of an EV charging installation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Do all EV chargers need to be connected to the internet?
A: Dumb chargers — basic charging units that simply supply power — do not require an internet connection. However, a dumb charger cannot perform load management, cannot support individual resident billing, and cannot be monitored or managed remotely. In a strata building with multiple residents and a shared electrical supply, a dumb charger is not a viable solution. Any charger that meets the functional requirements of a strata installation will require a continuous, reliable internet connection.
Q: Can EV chargers use the building's existing Wi-Fi?
A: This is technically possible but not recommended for strata installations. Underground car parks present poor conditions for Wi-Fi — thick concrete construction attenuates wireless signal significantly, and the connection quality in a car park is typically inadequate for the reliable, low-latency communication that load management and billing systems require. An intermittent Wi-Fi connection causes load management failures and billing gaps. Wired ethernet is the correct solution for car park EV charging infrastructure.
Q: Who manages the EV charging network after installation?
A: The network layer — VLAN configuration, firewall rules, switch management, and connectivity monitoring — should be managed by the same provider that manages the building's other network infrastructure. Pickle manages this layer for strata buildings across New South Wales, providing ongoing monitoring, fault diagnosis, and configuration management for EV charging networks alongside CCTV, access control, and other building systems. The charger hardware and billing platform are typically managed by the EV charging vendor under a separate service agreement.
Q: Can the EV charging network be added to an existing managed building network?
A: Yes. In buildings where Pickle already manages the network infrastructure for CCTV, access control, and building management systems, adding an EV charging VLAN is an extension of the existing configuration. The managed switches already in place support additional VLANs, and the firewall can be updated to permit outbound OCPP traffic from the new EV segment. This is one of the practical advantages of having a managed building network — adding new systems is a configuration task, not a new infrastructure project.
Q: What is OCPP and why does it matter?
A: OCPP — the Open Charge Point Protocol — is the industry-standard communication protocol used by smart EV chargers to communicate with their cloud management platforms. It is an open standard, which means chargers from different manufacturers can communicate with platforms from different vendors, and building owners are not locked into a proprietary ecosystem. OCPP connections use standard WebSocket connections over port 80 or 443, which means they work within normal internet infrastructure without requiring special network configurations beyond a basic outbound firewall rule. When evaluating an EV charging proposal, confirming that the system is OCPP-compliant is a basic due diligence step.
Get the Network Right Before the Chargers Go In
EV charging in strata buildings is an IT and network project as much as it is an electrical one. The buildings that install smart charging infrastructure correctly — with wired ethernet, dedicated VLANs, managed switching, and properly configured firewall rules — will have systems that work reliably, bill accurately, and can be diagnosed and maintained remotely. The buildings that treat EV charging as a purely electrical project will encounter the predictable failure modes: chargers showing offline, billing systems failing to record sessions, and load management dropping out at peak times.
Pickle manages the network infrastructure that building systems run on — including EV charging networks. If your owners corporation is evaluating an EV charging project and you want to make sure the network layer is correctly specified from the beginning, contact the Pickle team before the electrical work starts.
Call 1300 688 588 or email [email protected].