In New Zealand? Visit quarter.nz for body corporates.
Almost every apartment owner who buys an EV hits the same wall: the car park has no power, the switchboard is full, and nobody knows who is allowed to say yes. It is not really an electrical problem. It is a decision problem with an electrical bill attached. Get the decision right, in the right order, and the rest is a job for a contractor — often one substantially paid for by a grant.
Queensland has no household or strata EV charger rebate open at present. Its charging support is aimed at workplaces, businesses and councils. For a body corporate that means the project has to stand on its own numbers — which it very often does, because Queensland car parks tend to be newer and easier to work in than the southern states' basements, and because the building's decision process is the more expensive obstacle.
Governed by the Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997, administered by the Office of the Commissioner for Body Corporate and Community Management.
Programmes open, allocate and close, and the terms change between rounds. Check the current position with the administering body before you budget around any of these.
Queensland Government
The current list of Queensland charging support. Most open programmes target workplaces, businesses and local government rather than residential bodies corporate — worth checking each year, but not something to build a budget around today.
Official pageThe module decides what the committee can approve alone and what needs a general meeting. Get this wrong and the contract you sign is not authorised.
Spare capacity and switchboard headroom. Many Queensland buildings have more room than owners assume, which makes the business case easier than in older southern stock.
In Quarter: Quotes, studies, assessments and correspondence attach to the decision that authorised them, so the file an assessor, an owner or a buyer's solicitor asks for is already assembled.
The two take different paths. A shared system funded by levies is a general meeting matter; one owner's charger in their own bay is an approval-to-improve matter.
Queensland's long notice period is an advantage on a capital motion — owners get time to read the numbers.
In Quarter: Build the motion from the quotes and the budget, send the notice to every owner off the ownership register on the statutory clock, and record the vote as it is cast — a decision carries its majority automatically and emails the outcome to whoever raised it.
Queensland is strict about how committee decisions are made and recorded. Approvals given informally can be unwound.
In Quarter: The ownership register, financial records, insurance, contracts and documents sit in one searchable place, so a handover is an export rather than an archaeology project — and they are still there when the committee turns over.
Metering and billing terms agreed before installation, and recorded with the approval.
In Quarter: Recover the running cost through the same ledger as the levies, so charging is invoiced, collected and reconciled rather than tracked in somebody's spreadsheet.
Spending limits are real and they are module-specific. Exceeding them is the most common Queensland procedural failure on capital work.
An approval that was never a properly made committee decision is one an owner can challenge later through the Commissioner.
Approvals for owner-funded chargers should carry conditions — insurance, licensed installation, ongoing maintenance, and what happens when the owner sells.
Waiting is the expensive option. The cost of getting a building EV-ready barely changes, but the cost of doing it badly — one owner at a time, running an extension of the house supply to one bay — rises with every ad hoc installation you have to undo.
The technical part is the easy part. Quarter handles the part that actually stalls these projects: getting a building to a decision it can evidence.
Scope, quotes, funding source and the terms of use, written as a motion owners can vote on rather than a proposal they have to interpret.
The right meeting, the right notice period, the right resolution type, and a vote that is recorded properly the first time.
Feasibility study, electrical assessment, quotes and correspondence, filed against the decision rather than scattered across three inboxes.
Most applications want the same things: the resolution, the quote, the scheme details and the building's numbers. Quarter already holds all four.
Whether users pay per kWh or by a fixed charge, the money has to be billed, collected and reconciled. That is the part that fails six months in.
General information about Queensland, not legal or financial advice for your building. Legislation is amended and grant programmes open and close — check the current position with the Office of the Commissioner for Body Corporate and Community Management or the administering body before you act on anything here.
Tell us about your building in Queensland and we will show you exactly how Quarter would run it.
