Balwyn North is a suburb of big houses and second cars. At the 2021 Census, 83.0% of its occupied homes were separate houses, they averaged 3.6 bedrooms and 2.0 registered vehicles, and 21.3% had three or more vehicles. That makes EV charger installation Balwyn North work as much about the second charger, and the supply behind it, as the first. Our nearest base is 128 Toorak Rd, South Yarra, about 10 km away. The first thing our A-grade electricians establish here is which of three electricity networks your house is connected to.
Three networks meet in postcode 3104
Most Victorian suburbs sit on a single distributor’s network. In the data file behind the CitiPower postcode network locator, 2,800 of the 2,974 suburb and postcode pairs return one network, and only 11 return three. Balwyn North is one of those 11: the locator lists CitiPower, Jemena and United Energy for 3104, without saying which streets belong to which. It sits where three service areas meet: CitiPower’s network covers Melbourne’s CBD and inner suburbs, Jemena runs the northern and south-western suburbs, and United Energy supplies Melbourne’s east and south-east.
One location is confirmed. Council has accepted CitiPower’s offer to supply electricity for a public fast-charging station at the Balwyn North Village car park on Macedon Avenue, so CitiPower’s network reaches the Village car park. For everywhere else we check the individual address before anything is lodged.
It matters because each network runs its own process for changing a supply. CitiPower takes alteration requests from registered electrical contractors through its eConnect portal. Jemena’s alterations FAQ classes a single-phase to three-phase change as an alteration, but anything that moves the point of supply becomes a new connection. United Energy wants wall chargers registered on its myEnergy portal. Same suburb, three sets of forms.
EV charger installation Balwyn North for two-EV households
Households here are larger than in neighbouring Balwyn (2.6) and Kew East (2.7), at 2.9 people per home in 2021, and most own their place: 45.8% outright and 32.3% with a mortgage. With two or three cars in so many driveways, we plan for the household’s second EV even when there’s only one in the garage today. There are four sensible set-ups.
- One charger, shared on a schedule. Fine when the cars seldom both run low on the same day.
- Two chargers with load management. A controller measures the home’s total load and trims the charging current, so the chargers share the capacity the house already has and back off when the rest of the house is busy.
- A three-phase upgrade, then two chargers. Worth it when both cars do big distances, or one of them can use more than single-phase AC.
- Solar-aware charging. A charger that tracks the panels soaks up daytime generation, handy for a car that’s home during the day.
Our view: load management should be the default starting point here, and a supply upgrade the step you take when the numbers say so. The upgrade path is still there later if you need it.
Check the cars before paying for capacity they can’t use. Each EV has its own ceiling for AC charging, so a bigger wall box only speeds things up for a car whose onboard charger can accept more.
Networks have been looking at the same problem. The ARENA-funded Jemena Dynamic EV Charging Trial ran from December 2020 to August 2023 with 176 EVs across the ACT, Victoria and Tasmania, testing how networks could manage home charging times.
Going three-phase: who does what
A supply upgrade involves more people than the electrician. The Victorian Service and Installation Rules set out a typical connection process, and the diagram beside this section follows it. Your registered electrical contractor works out the supply needed and applies to the distributor; the distributor and customer agree the conditions; your retailer’s metering provider installs the meter; and the distributor connects once it receives the Certificate of Electrical Safety. Work that needs the distributor’s crew on site should be booked early.
Two rules in the same document are worth knowing before you shop. The rules give EV chargers as an example of new equipment that may need a supply capacity upgrade. And for equipment that could disturb the network’s voltage, they advise that no expense be incurred until an application has been made to the distributor and its advice received. We apply the same caution to big chargers: hold off buying a 22 kW unit until the network has answered.
Our three-phase power upgrade service for EV charging handles the application, the new main switchboard if one is needed, and the coordination with your retailer.
Building new or extending: wire for the charger now
If you’re rebuilding or adding a garage, the cheapest charger circuit is the one run before the plaster goes on. The National Construction Code’s EV-ready rules in J9D4 apply to car parks serving apartment buildings and most commercial and public buildings, not to houses, so a new house is only ready for a charger if someone plans for it.
In practice that means a cable sized for a 7 kW charger to each likely parking spot, room on the switchboard for the circuits, and a thought about three-phase while the supply is being designed anyway. It costs little at the framing stage and saves cutting into finished walls later. If the garage will have a charger from day one, our home EV charger installation service can fit it at the electrical fit-off.
Roof space helps too. Heritage controls are thin here: going by our sampling of the state’s overlay maps, only about 4% of Balwyn North’s land area is under a Heritage Overlay, so for most houses solar panels raise no heritage question at all. Solar Victoria’s advice on solar, batteries and EV charging explains how panels and a home battery work with an EV, and our solar EV charger installation service sets the charger up to follow the panels.
Post-war houses and the Riverside Estate
The heritage that does exist here is distinctive. The Riverside Estate and Environs precinct, around Riverside Avenue, Kyora Parade, Walbundry Avenue and The Boulevard, is valued for large interwar houses from the 1930s building boom, on a slope with broad views of the Yarra Valley and distant mountains. On Maud Street, a row of single-storey brick maisonettes went up between 1938 and 1940, a short walk from the tram terminus that opened on Doncaster Road in 1938; painter John Brack lived in one of them from 1953 to 1962 and painted the spreading suburbia of Balwyn and Balwyn North. In several cases the maisonettes keep original detached garages set well back to the rear, and a charger inside one of those stays out of view.
Council has also listed a run of post-war houses in recent years, and a 2024 statement of significance describes Balwyn North and Balwyn as “a locus for Post-war Modernist houses”. If your house is one of them, a charger in view of a street or public park needs a VicSmart permit, while one in the garage doesn’t.
Charging away from home: Balwyn North Village
The Village runs along Doncaster Road from Bulleen Road to past Marwal Avenue, with 249 parking spaces across the shopping centre, on-street bays included. Council’s Balwyn North Village improvements page says three EV chargers will go into the north-east car park near Macedon Avenue, opposite the nursery, and expects them to be commissioned in 2027. Council’s parking audit in October 2025 found spaces available in its three Village car parks even at peak times. The same page says the Department of Transport and Planning expected to finish the signs for a time-based 40 km/h limit on Doncaster Road, between Aylmer Street and The Moor from 7am to 7pm, by the end of June 2026.
Frequently asked questions about Balwyn North homes
Which network is my Balwyn North house on?
The postcode locator can’t tell you: it lists CitiPower, Jemena and United Energy for 3104 without splitting the suburb. On the state’s Vicmap boundary data, about 97% of Balwyn North’s area is CitiPower, so that is the usual answer, but we check your address before lodging anything with a network.
Can two EVs charge overnight without going three-phase?
Often, yes. With load management, the two chargers split the existing supply between them, and a schedule covers nights when both cars need topping up. We look at the switchboard and your driving before suggesting an upgrade.
Should I buy a 22 kW charger before the network approves an upgrade?
We’d wait. For equipment that could disturb the network, the Victorian Service and Installation Rules advise against spending until the distributor has received an application and given its advice. We apply the same caution to a 22 kW charger, which also needs three-phase power to run at that rate.
When will the Balwyn North Village chargers open?
Council expects to commission three chargers in the car park near Macedon Avenue in 2027, with CitiPower supplying the electricity.
Will you install a charger that came with the car?
Yes. If the dealer supplied a wall charger, we install it on its own circuit with the right protection, test it and issue the Certificate of Electrical Safety, the same as for a unit we supply.
Is my post-war house heritage-listed?
Check your address on VicPlan and look for a Heritage Overlay in the property report. Several post-war houses in Balwyn North have been added in recent years, so an older search may be out of date.
Tell us how many cars live at your place and what they are, and we’ll suggest the simplest set-up that covers them. Send a quote request through our contact page, or phone 1300 003 853 (7am to 7pm, Monday to Saturday). Below Belmore Road the suburb becomes Balwyn, covered on our Balwyn EV charger installation page; over Burke Road, our Kew East charger installation page takes over.