If you buy an electric car and plan to install a charging pile, 3 things you need to know in advance

Tong Zongqi, director of the Information Department of the China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Alliance, mentioned a data in an interview with China Automobile News in 2022.

The proportion of electric car owners who have successfully installed private charging piles in their communities is only 50%.

In other words, private charging piles are sometimes not something you can install if you want. Friends who have bought an electric car and are planning to install a private charging pile, it is best to understand the three things mentioned below in advance.

01

Understand the process of installing charging piles

The first thing you need to understand is the general process of installing charging piles. Just like when we get a marriage certificate, we have to know what materials we need to prepare, who we need to take with us, and which department we need to go to, right?

Generally speaking, to apply for the installation of charging piles, you need to prepare installation materials and then apply to the power supply bureau.

After the power supply bureau passes the review, it will come to the site to investigate and install the meter. After the electric meter is installed, you can call a master to come and install the electric pole.

It sounds simple, but in fact, many car owners are already stumped in the first step of preparing application materials.

When customers apply for the installation of charging piles, they need to provide the identity certificate of the electricity user, the property rights certificate of the electricity address, the electric vehicle ownership certificate and the property's consent for construction.

The hardest thing to get here is the last thing, which is called the "Consent Letter of Property".

It said: When owners install charging piles, the resistance they encounter mainly comes from the property, accounting for 54.8%, more than half.

02

Understand whether the property agrees

Therefore, the second thing you need to know in advance is whether the property management company agrees to install charging piles.

According to regulations, the property management company is actually obliged to cooperate with us in installing charging piles.

But in reality, the property management company may use various strange reasons to reject us. I'll talk about a few of the more common ones.

The first one, the property management said: "As long as we can get the consent of the residents of the entire building, it can be installed."

But in fact, as long as the parking space is purchased by oneself, the reason of "requiring the consent of other residents" is not valid.

Second, the property management company may say: "Oh, this thing needs the approval of the fire department and the power supply department. It only has to have no safety hazards, right?"

It is said that the fire brigade must issue an opinion allowing the installation of charging piles before it can cooperate with the installation.

As long as there are no fire protection issues in the building itself, the owner does not need to obtain approval from the fire department to install charging piles in parking spaces.

So when the property management company said this, it was actually just kicking the ball. Of course, if we encounter the situations just mentioned, we are not helpless.

First, you can report it to the property owners committee or neighborhood committee, and they will come forward to negotiate. If you still disagree, you can complain to the property management department.

If that doesn't work, we can finally protect our legitimate rights and interests through litigation.

There is another special situation, which I will talk about a little bit here.

If it is an old community, the property management company may say that the community's power capacity is insufficient, there is no way to install charging piles, and there is no power. This is not necessarily because the property management is perfunctory with us. This kind of thing does happen.

It says above: The electricity consumption indicator for general house types is about 6 to 8kW/household.

However, in some old residential areas, when they were designed, the average power capacity per household did not meet this standard.

It would definitely be unaffordable to have dozens of charging piles. Not to mention the air conditioners, the lights might not even turn on.

In this case, it may only be possible to install charging piles after the power supply department carries out the transformation of power distribution facilities.

03

Find out if there are any additional conditions

If you haven't encountered any of the above, the property management company has indeed agreed.

The third thing we need to know in advance is to ask the property owner if there are any additional requirements for circuit design and materials. These requirements are often quite detailed.

For example, do the wiring need to be covered with PVC plastic pipes? Do they have to follow the original cable route? Are there any requirements for the thickness of the wires?

Asking these questions first can greatly reduce the communication costs when installing charging piles later. After all, the installation master and the property owner need us as the middleman to coordinate and communicate.

If something goes wrong during installation, communication will be tiring, time-consuming, labor-intensive, and expensive.

In addition, we need to ask in advance what additional materials we can buy ourselves in advance and save some money.